Songs of Summer  Meredith Harron ’26 trained and performed with the Mediterranean Opera Festival this summer through a Johnson Opportunity Grant. 

By Kelsey Goodwin
July 18, 2025

“This program has simultaneously been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences that I’ve ever had.”

~ Meredith Harron ’26

High Point, North Carolina native Meredith Harron ’26 discovered her passion for music at a young age. She never imagined that passion would one day connect her with fellow vocalists from around the world for a whirlwind summer in Sicily.

Harron, who is pursuing a B.S. in music and a B.A. in cognitive and behavioral sciences at Washington and Lee University, arrived in Caltagirone, Sicily, on June 22 to begin training and performing with the Mediterranean Opera Festival. She is participating in a five-week international summer program dedicated to training emerging opera singers, conductors and instrumentalists through full-scale productions of classic operas.

The festival offers participants the opportunity to work with distinguished professionals in voice, stage direction and orchestral performance while gaining real-world stage experience. Each season includes performances of canonical works by composers like Verdi, Puccini and Mozart, presented in historic venues. The program fosters cultural exchange, artistic growth and professional development in a uniquely inspiring Mediterranean setting. For Harron, the experience has been transformative.

“This program has simultaneously been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences that I’ve ever had,” Harron says.

Harron says she attended W&L because she knew she wanted to be able to pursue her interest in music alongside her interest in psychology. Her experiences traveling with University Singers and with W&L’s Spring Term Abroad program sparked an additional passion for travel, and Harron was excited to secure an opportunity to connect and learn with fellow performers from around the world this summer.

“Some of my closest friends here are from New Zealand, Australia and Canada,” Harron says. “It’s just a bunch of really talented artists from all over the world, which is an amazing experience – to get to know all these different people and come together over a shared love of music.”

Harron’s Johnson Opportunity Grant paid for her program fees and travel to Sicily. The Johnson Opportunity Grant, open to rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors at W&L, funds unique summer experiences and projects across the U.S. and abroad. Recent grants have supported students who studied veterinary medicine in the Amazon, interned in Washington D.C., founded a nonprofit, and summited mountains in Nepal.

Festival participants are assigned roles in multiple productions. Harron is performing as Giannetta in “L’elisir d’amore” by Gaetano Donizetti and as Teresa in “La Sonnambula” by Vincenzo Bellini; she is also in the chorus for Puccini’s “La Boheme.” The festival program begins with intensive rehearsals before nightly performances begin, and daily vocal coaching sessions continue throughout the program’s duration. Harron says the opportunity to work with highly experienced professionals from opera houses around the world is exactly what she was looking for and has helped her build confidence in her vocal style.

“We are given coaching with ten different coaches, often receiving two or three different lessons a day,” Harron says. “This means that you will inevitably receive ten different opinions on your voice and what you need to practice to improve your skills. I think I have learned that you really just have to trust in yourself and what you know about your voice, absorbing and studying all the information that you find helpful and politely declining that which might not work for you.”

Although Harron is not fluent in Italian, she says the Italian courses she has taken at W&L have helped prepare her for her summer experience. Program participants are expected to learn precise diction in the language, regardless of their fluency, and Harron says the knowledgeable Italian audiences who attend the festival’s performances know the works intimately enough to notice the performers’ pronunciation.

“Sometimes you’ll have an audience member singing along to an aria,” Harron says, “because they know it by heart. It’s both invigorating and a little nerve-wracking at the same time.”

Harron will conclude her time with the festival on July 27 and spend time traveling to the Amalfi Coast with her family before returning to the United States. Harron has her sights set on pursuing graduate studies in music, although she has not yet decided whether or not those studies will include another stint abroad. Regardless of where her voice takes her next, Harron says she is savoring her time immersed in a new culture.

“I learn something new about Sicilian culture every day,” Harron says, “and it’s such a beautiful experience.”

Learn more about how the Johnson Opportunity Grant supports W&L students’ summer experiences and read about past grant recipients’ summer experiences.