Graduate award winner presented by Alltech

Huntsville Times: The nation's top young opera singers vied for prizes at the Alltech Opera Competition at the University of Kentucky.

Six winners from the popular competition may soon lend their voices to UK Opera Theatre. The event, which awards a number of opera scholarships and prizes, included seven major prize categories that were awarded to graduate and undergraduate students by Alltech; Kentucky Opera; Bryant's Rent-All; Lexington Opera Society; the Kentucky chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters; the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria; and UK Opera Theatre.

Graduate students vied for two Alltech Graduate prizes that include full UK graduate assistantships with the first-place winner earning an additional $10,000 cash award and the second-place winner receiving an additional $7,500 cash award. The first-place graduate winner is Bruce Bean, a tenor from Huntsville, pursuing a master's degree in vocal performance and pedagogy at Oakwood University. This year the Kentucky Opera prize, which guarantees its winning vocalist a future Main Stage role with the Kentucky Opera, was presented to Bean. He was an AIMS award winner, a $2,000 prize toward tuition at the AIMS Institute in Graz.