Michael Morgan (conductor) Conservatory of Music, he spent a summer at the Oberlin College Conservatory at Tanglewood. There he was a student of Gunther Schuller and Seiji Ozawa, and it was at that time that he first worked with Leonard Bernstein. In 1980, he won first prize in the Hans Swarovsky International Conductors Competition in Vienna, Austria and became Assistant Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, under Leonard Slatkin. His operatic debut was in 1982 at the Vienna State Opera in Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio". In 1986, Sir Georg Solti chose him to become the Assistant Conductor of the Chicago
Ileana Cotrubaș study at the "Școala Specială de Muzică" school for the musically gifted. Cotrubaș made her stage debut with the Bucharest Opera as Yniold in Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" in 1964. She subsequently expanded her repertory to include roles such as Oscar in "Un ballo in maschera", Gilda in "Rigoletto", and Blondchen in "The Abduction from the Seraglio" and began appearing in productions throughout Europe. In 1965, Cotrubaș won an important competition in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands where she won first prize in opera, lieder, and oratorio. The following year, she won a radio-television competition in Munich. Those awards, together with her great