FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 2, 2002 CONTACT Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119 MET OPERA SINGER TO GIVE CONCERT AT DRAKE Stanford Olsen, one of the world's leading light lyric tenors, will perform the Edwin Earle Ferguson Artist-In-Residence Concert on Friday, April 12, at Drake University. The concert will start at 8 p.m. on the Jordan Stage in Sheslow Auditorium in Old Main, 25th Street and University Avenue. Olsen made his Metropolitan Opera debut on an hour's notice as Arturo in "I Puritani" opposite the legendary soprano Joan Sutherland in 1986. Since then, he has performed over 150 times with New York's Metropolitan Opera, and has been heard in such major venues as La Scala, Australian Opera, San Francisco Opera and most other significant opera companies in the United States and Europe. Olsen's 2001-02 season includes performances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Olsen received the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Utah and the Artists Diploma in Opera from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, which named him Alumnus of the Year in 1992. A long-time coach for members of the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist Development Program, he has taught young singers in master classes at Santa Fe Opera, St. Louis Opera Theatre, The Eastman School, Tanglewood, New England Conservatory and The Manhattan School of Music. His recordings of Bach, Mozart and Rossini have received critical praise, including a 1995 nomination for a Grammy Award for Rossini's "Tancredi" with Alberto Zedda on the Naxos label. His 1999 Telarc recording of Dvorak's "Stabat Mater," with the Atlanta Symphony under the baton of Robert Shaw, also received a Grammy nomination. Tickets for the Drake concert are $10 for adults and $5 for students. They are available at the Drake Fine Arts Box Office, (515) 271-3841. Olsen also will conduct a master class for Drake students at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 13, on the Jordan Stage in Sheslow Auditorium in Old Main. The class is free and open to the public. Olsen's appearances at Drake are made possible by an endowment established by the late Edwin Earle Ferguson, who worked his way through Drake during the Great Depression by playing the piano at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, Younkers Tea Room and WHO Radio. He received his bachelor's degree from Drake in 1931 and his Drake law degree in 1934.