Richard Tucker Music Foundation Names 2025 Award Winner and Grant Recipients

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation has announced the recipients of its prestigious Richard Tucker Award, Richard Tucker Career Grant, and Sara Tucker Study Grant. 

Nicholas Brownlee, bass-baritone, has been named the winner of the 2025 Richard Tucker Award. The award comes with a $50,000 cash prize as well as the ongoing support of the Tucker family and foundation. It is hoped that the award acts as a well-timed catalyst to elevate the selected artist’s career to even greater heights. The Richard Tucker Award is selected by conferral, rather than audition. Brownlee is a previous recipient of a 2017 Richard Tucker Career Grant and a 2016 Sara Tucker Study Grant.

“The Tucker Foundation, and namely Richard Tucker, helped turn opera into a real, homegrown American thing. It makes me proud as an American how he helped change the way that American schooling became the best schooling for voice,” remarks Nicholas Brownlee.

“Going through the Sara Tucker Study Grant, the Richard Tucker Career Grant, and now the big Richard Tucker Award, it’s hard to put into words how much each one of those stages has progressed my career. To be added to the list of previous award winners who have championed American opera singers is incredibly overwhelming, but it’s the biggest ‘attaboy’ that you could ever have — as an artist, you never really know the effect you’re making. You go out on stage every night, you give everything that you have, but you wonder, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ And when you get an award like this, it says you’re on the right path and to keep going, that what you’re doing matters as it’s affecting and touching people. It makes me proud to carry the Tucker name.”

He concludes, “I also stand on the shoulders of every single educator and supporter of mine who saw talent in me when I didn’t see it in myself. Also, my wife, Jennifer, is my biggest supporter in the world. I am incredibly grateful.”

Bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee has been described as “charismatic and charming” (New York Times) with a “commanding presence” and “rich tone” (Musical America). He is a first prize winner of the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, winner of the Zarzuela prize at Operalia, and a grand prize winner of The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Nicholas begins the 24/25 season with a return to the Bayerische Staatsoper for a new Tobias Kratzer production of Das Rheingold (Wotan) followed by a return to Oper Frankfurt for new productions of Macbeth (title role), Parsifal (Amfortas), and a revival of Aida (Amonasro). Additional performances include debuts with Opéra national de Paris for the new Calixto Bieito production of Das Rheingold (Wotan), Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía for Der fliegende Holländer (Title Role), Oper Leipzig for Das Rheingold (Wotan), and a return to the Bayreuther Festspiele for Das Rheingold (Donner). On the concert stage, he debuts with the Cēsis Art Festival in a concert performance of Parsifal (Amfortas) and Prague Philharmonia Orchestra for a mixed program with Emmanuel Villaume.

Past winners of the Richard Tucker Award include Clay Hilley, Angel Blue, Jamie Barton, Stephanie Blythe, Lawrence Brownlee, Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming, Christine Goerke, Isabel Leonard, Lisette Oropesa, Matthew Polenzani, Nadine Sierra, and Deborah Voigt.

Meridian Prall, mezzo-soprano, Nikola Printz, mezzo-soprano, and Ricardo José Rivera, baritone, have been selected recipients of the 2025 Richard Tucker Career Grant. Recipients receive unrestricted grants of $10,000 each.

Past Career Grant recipients include Anthony Léon, Luke Sutliff, Elena Villalón, Leah Hawkins, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Sean Michael Plumb, Benjamin Bliss, J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Ryan Speedo Green, Samantha Hankey, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Quinn Kelsey, Will Liverman, Erin Morley, Susanna Phillips, and Rachel Willis-Sørensen.

Daniel Luis Espinal, tenor, Ben Reisinger, tenor, and Finn Sagal, baritone, have been selected recipients of the 2025 Sara Tucker Study Grant. Recipients receive unrestricted grants of $5,000 each. Study Grant recipients typically are in the transition from student to professional singer, and should have recently completed a graduate degree program or work in a young artist or Apprentice program at a regional company.

Past Study Grant Recipients include Trevor Haumschilt-Rocha, Kathleen O’Mara, Emily Sierra, Katerina Burton, Blake Denson, Stefan Egerstrom, Jonah Hoskins, Brittany Logan, Luke Sutliff, Elena Villalón, John Holiday, Laquita Mitchell, Amanda Majeski, Miles Mykkanen, and Andrew Stenson.

Singers (U.S.-born or naturalized citizens by age 18) were invited to audition for Career and Study Grants via nomination; there is no application process. Study and Career Grant nominees auditioned at the 92nd Street Y’s Kaufmann Hall on May 5 and 6, 2025, respectively. The auditions, which take place annually in New York City, were free and open to the public.

2025 audition panelists included representatives of the Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Canadian Opera Company, and the Bayerisches Staatsoper, Munich.

About the Richard Tucker Music Foundation

After Richard Tucker’s untimely death in 1975, his duo partner and friend Robert Merrill worked with the Tucker family to organize a gathering of opera legends, including Martina Arroyo and Roberta Peters, to take place on what would have been the duo’s next date at Carnegie Hall. The Richard Tucker Music Foundation was formed later that year, and the concert became an annual tradition, raising funds to support young American opera singers and keep the beloved tenor’s memory alive. For more than four decades, the foundation’s annual concert has brought together some of opera’s most illustrious stars, including Leonard Bernstein, Montserrat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Leontyne Price, and Joan Sutherland.

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 (often referred to as the “Heisman Trophy of Opera”), on an artist poised at the edge of a major international career.