FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 25, 2008

College of Fine Arts Alumna a Winner of the 2008 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson, 23,  a 2006 graduate of Webster University, was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera's 2008 National Council Auditions. She won $15,000 and a major boost to her singing career.

Johnson, currently a second-year graduate student at Rice University in Houston, has been a Gerdine Young Artist at Opera Theatre of St. Louis for the last two seasons and will return this spring in the role of Kate Pinkerton in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly."

Nine finalists, each from a different geographical region, took the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on Sunday afternoon. Opera Theatre's music director, Stephen Lord, led them and the Met Orchestra in a concert that determined the winners.