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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 8 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 35 A RT S & C U LT U R E musicians that Yale hoped to lure to the YSM faculty ranks — pro- fessors attracted to the idea of working with world-class students. "Heretofore, the faculty would ask, 'How can we get these really great students who want to him here?'" Blocker says. "Now, they have the financial means to be able to talk to these students." Hitting high notes Among those students was mez- zosoprano Sarah Saturnino, who graduated from YSM this May with a master's in music. A California native who attended UCLA as an undergrad, Saturnino knew little about Yale's graduate music school before she read about the Adams gi while reading a magazine on an airplane. "It was shocking to me, because I had never heard of Yale being this up-and-coming music school," Saturnino recalls. "Everyone knows Yale Law School and Yale Medical School. But the Ivy League seemed so far beyond the scope of what I was capable of." Not to mention 3,000 miles from home for the young Californian, who dreamed of a career in opera. As she pondered her post-gradu- ation options while still at UCLA, the Yale option began to come into focus — including the financial benefits to coming east. "No one wants to take out $60,000 in loans when they go to grad school," she says. "I knew it was a good program, and I knew that it was free." What sold her on Yale when she flew east for an audition in the spring of 2016 and was inter- viewed by Doris Yarick-Cross, the legendary soprano and head of the highly regarded Yale Opera program. "Yale was the only place I applied to where I actually had an interview," she says. "All the other places [Saturnino had also applied to Julliard, Curtis, San Francisco Conservatory and Rice University] only had an audition. Yale had an interview first, and the next day you had an audition." During the interview Yarick- Cross asked her about her profi- ciency in various languages (there are very few English-languages operas in the standard repertoire), and how fast a learner she was of highly complex and frighteningly difficult music. Which was a good thing. "At Yale "It was shocking to me, because I had never heard of Yale being this up-and- coming music school." - Sarah Saturnino Graduated Yale School of Music in May Continued on next page

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