OUR STORY
The New Generation Festival (NGF) was founded in 2017 by Frankie Parham, Roger Granville, and Maximilian Fane with the aim of promoting emerging young artists from around the world. The NGF presented the finest talents in opera and across the arts with a programme that ran throughout the year in spectacular locations, ranging from the Swiss mountains of Andermatt to its flagship summer festival in Florence. Inspired by the achievements of the Italian Renaissance, the NGF celebrated creativity and stimulated it through the connection of artforms, cultures and generations. In August 2020, the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NGF staged The ReGeneration Festival in partnership with The Uffizi Galleries at the landmark Boboli Gardens to demonstrate the importance of sustaining the performing arts in times of crisis. It was an unprecedented event and magnificent proof of what is possible through cooperation.
The Mascarade Opera Studio was developed by the NGF team to build on the success of the NGF Summer School, which provided talented young singers with opera training and the opportunity to take part in the NGF’s chorus. Founded in one of the very cities where the artform was born, the aim of the Mascarade Opera Studio’s nine-month programme was to re-evaluate opera training and the function of opera in society. Situated at the Palazzo Corsini al Prato, the Mascarade Opera Studio opened its doors in September 2020 to eight singers and two répétiteurs from renowned conservatoire and opera training programmes with an added focus on the development of psychological performance skills, as well as resilience, personal evaluation and career coaching.
In September 2022, the Mascarade Opera Studio expanded further into a two-year high-ability training and performance programme called Mascarade Emerging Artists designed specifically for the career development of the most promising emerging artists - young singers and répétiteurs - from around the world.
