Live From Lincoln Center to Present the Richard Tucker Opera Gala on PBS in January

This January, Live From Lincoln Center-continuing its 40th anniversary season-will broadcast one of the most celebrated opera events of the year, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation's annual gala concert. This year's highlight's concert features performances by opera's brightest lights and rising stars, including Joseph Calleja, Angela Meade, Željko Lucic, Ildar Abdrazakov, Pretty Yende, as well as the 2014 Richard Tucker Award winner Michael Fabiano in solo and ensemble selections from works by Puccini, Mozart, Bellini, Massenet, Donizetti, Verdi, and Bernstein, conducted by Maestro Emmanuel Villaume with the New York Choral Society. The broadcast event was taped in October 2014 at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall and follows last year's centennial celebration of the great operatic tenor Richard Tucker. Live From Lincoln Center's "Richard Tucker Opera Gala: A New Century" will air on Friday, January 23, 2015 at 10:00 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), and will be hosted by Audra McDonald.

Founded in 1975, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation is a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to perpetuating the artistic legacy of the great Brooklyn-born tenor by nurturing the careers of talented young American opera singers. Through awards, grants for study, performance opportunities, and other activities, the Foundation provides professional development for singers at various stages of their careers. It also offers free performances in the New York metropolitan area and supports music education enrichment programs. Each year, the Foundation confers its most prestigious prize, the Richard Tucker Award, on an artist poised at the edge of a major international career. Often referred to as the "Heisman Trophy of Opera," the award comes with a $50,000 cash prize as well as the ongoing support of the Tucker family and Foundation. Many of the singers featured on the program are past recipients of the foundation's biggest prize, the Richard Tucker Award, which gave them recognition and much-needed funds at a crucial point in their careers.

The 2014 award-winner is Michael Fabiano, hailed as "the tenor that we have all been waiting for" (San Francisco Classical Voice). At just 30, the native of Montclair, NJ, has already appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Teatro Real, Opéra National de Paris, Teatro alla Scala, Dresden Semperoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, English National Opera, Glyndebourne, and the Teatro San Carlo. This season, he returned to the San Francisco Opera and the Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in La bohème, and over the coming months he sings the title role in Faust with the Australian Opera and with the Opéra National de Paris. A graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, his previous honors include the 2014 Beverly Sills Artist Award, a 2007 Sara Tucker Study Grant, and a Grand Prize in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

This episode of LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER is directed for television by Emmy Award-winner Annette Jolles, who also directed last year's presentation of the Richard Tucker Opera Gala broadcast. The executive producer of the LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER series is Andrew C. Wilk.

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