Two Chinese opera singers make Met grade

Nearly 1,500 singers between the ages of 20 and 30 participated in this year's auditions, which are held annually in dozens of communities around the US and Canada and are sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council. Nine finalists performed in the final phase of competition. The other winners were Julie Adams, a 26-year-old soprano from Burbank, California; Patrick Guetti, a 26-year-old bass from Highland Park, New Jersey; and Amanda Woodbury, a 26-year-old soprano from Crestwood, Kentucky. The finalists who didn't win each received a cash prize of $5,000.

French classics in 'Paris of the Orient'

Showing their brass

The audience for the final concert included artistic directors of leading opera companies, artist managers, established opera stars, important teachers and coaches, music critics and other industry professionals.

Ao Li studied at Shandong University and was a member of the San Francisco Opera's Adler Fellowship program. He was a 2013 winner of Placido Domingo's Operalia World Opera Competition - Rocky Mountain Region.

Ao Li says he began singing Western opera when his voice changed at age 12. "I loved singing, but it was all pop songs, Chinese pop songs," he says. "But after my voice changed I found my voice was getting lower and lower and I couldn't sing the songs I sang before. It was a little bit sad."

One day when he was 16, he caught an operatic performance on TV. "I thought, I can do this," he says. "This just fit my voice." Ao Li spent three years with the San Francisco Opera as an Adler fellow.

Yi Li is a graduate of the Sichuan Conservatory of Music and in the first year of Washington National Opera's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program. He is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.