Imagine a young opera singer in a silken gown center stage in a storied performance hall before a transfixed audience looking on in wonder.

Now stop to think: Can this mezzo-soprano afford a used Chevy?

Megan Moore couldn’t.

It was 2021, and the 30-year-old opera singer was just getting started in her career and living in New Jersey with jobs coming in various locations including the Berkshires and St. Louis area. Strapped for cash, she could rely on mass transit at home but not on the road. “I was, like, I really need a car,” Moore recalled. “I was thinking, I’m not going to be able to make this work without a car.”

And then she took first place in the Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition with the top prize of $15,000, a small fortune at the time. Opera is among the most expensive and challenging artistic careers to pursue, and most singers are counting every penny spent on travel, training and more.

Some winners with money in the bank might invest their prize money in more coaching, but Moore needed that car more than anything at the time and bought her gold Chevrolet Equinox from a trusted family friend. It would mean she’d be able to make those gigs in Missouri and Massachusetts, among others. Jobs like those can often lead to more visibility and work offers.

“Winning was like a little miracle,” she said. And beyond the money, “it’s sort of like a little firework going up to the industry to say, ‘Hey, take a look at this person amongst a sea of so many.’ It makes a big difference.”

More than $1 million for young singers

Making miracles for artists? Lavinia Jensen would have so loved hearing that.

She founded the Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition in honor of husband Fritz to support the careers of young opera singers. The Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation, which funds the competition, is a donor advised fund held at Foundation for the Carolinas. What started as a gesture to help high school performers in a North Carolina factory town find their way to summer music camps has mushroomed into one of the top competitions for young opera singers in the U.S.

The first competition took place in May 2000 and saw a field of 91 competitors. In 2026, the program crossed the $1 million mark in awards to 475 recipients. The contest awards prizes to all finalists, with the largest prizes going to first-third place. It also awards a prize for best performance of a 21^st-century aria and another prize that supports young opera singers.

And the opera world is grateful for her impact. The community has faced its challenges attracting new and younger audiences in recent decades. It’s also still recovering from devastating cancellations during the COVID pandemic.

Still, Opera in North America continues to hold its own despite today’s ferocious battle for entertainment dollars. In 2023-24 opera generated more than 2 million in attendance in the U.S. and Canada and invested more than $1 billion into the economy. Today, more than 100 U.S. cities have opera companies.

To help build new audiences, Jensen created a new prize in 2025 for their 25th anniversary: The $10,000 Facing Forward Award for best aria performance on a work created in the 21st century in support of modern composers. It’s also an effort to attract a younger crowd that may not be as enamored with traditional works that earlier generations of opera-goers favored. The move attracted a hail of Bravos! from composers and other artists thrilled to see new works getting more notice.

And that’s just part of the success story, said Ian Derrer, general director of the Canadian Opera Company, one of the largest in North America. “Over the years it’s grown in its prominence. Now people are watching, maybe more than ever, to see who won the Jensen. The list of winners is quite impressive, and you can look at the recipients of the past 5-10 years and see careers that have gone on to some really amazing things. … It’s held in great esteem.”

‘I can’t describe it…’

The Jensen prize money can provide a desperately needed safety net or be a coveted springboard to new opportunities.

For 2026 First Place winner, 29-year-old soprano Tessa McQueen, it was both. She netted $20,000 after also being named co-winner of the Facing Forward Award.

“I can’t describe it,” she said. “Now my rent is covered for next year. Now I can go and audition, and, you know, take gigs without feeling like I can’t afford it or have to get another job.

“It’s life-changing money.”

And money is never far from thought for most young opera singers trying to make the big time. If rock/pop music is at one end of the show business continuum, opera is at the other, and the challenges singers face trying to break their way in are far greater. While bands might crisscross the country in a van and crash on living room floors, budding opera singers have to be far scrappier than that if they want a chance. And, even then, it’s often a longshot.

In addition to years of college and formal musical training, there are voice lessons and coaching that can range as much as $300 an hour. And they need to be able to perform in German, Italian and French. Singers have to pay their way to auditions in other states, buy new gowns or tuxes, musical scores and may still not get the job. Many live in New York, one of the most expensive cities in the world, because it’s the hub of U.S. opera.

Moreover, most rising opera singers are “freelancers” who jump from one gig to the next with no steady income flowing in. Despite all those challenges, the field is still saturated with immensely talented, ambitious performers all jostling for limited jobs.

“It’s a super-exposed kind of career path,” said competition director Lisa Gray. “To be 25 or 26 years old – even 34-35 and putting yourself out there – is really an act of courage. There’s no place to hide.”

So when a Jensen award comes along, even if it’s one of the smaller prizes, it can make a big difference.

Starting with high schoolers

Stories are central to opera, of course. And Lavinia’s story can certainly hold its own.

“She wasn’t trying to be a philanthropist, she was just doing her thing,” said Jensen board president and opera baritone Oliver Worthington. “I don’t know that she anticipated that (her efforts) would perpetuate like this. But to be able to tell her that we’ve given away over a million dollars now? She would just be thrilled.”

Worthington was a high school student in Statesville, N.C., near Charlotte when he first met Lavinia, who was eager to find deserving kids to send to summer music camps that just might be out of reach for their families. Lavinia’s husband, Fritz, had amassed a small fortune after founding Southern Screw, a manufacturing company that created metal fasteners for the once-booming North Carolina furniture industry. The couple was wealthy but lived just a few streets away from Worthington in the middle-class neighborhood.

Lavinia, a native of Rockford, Ill, who died in 2001, was known in town but didn’t maintain a high profile. Unlike other prominent Southern families at the time, there were no streets or buildings that carried her name. Long after most working-class families installed washing machines and dryers, you could still find Lavinia at the local laundromat.

“Her thinking was: Do I really need that?’” Worthington recalled. At the same time, she didn’t hesitate to book a huge party at the famed, ultra extravagant French restaurant Lutèce in New York during one of the first years of the competition.

The couple was frugal but not cheap. While Lavinia and her husband traveled the world to take in opera and other performances, they did so by hitching a ride on freighters (staying in surplus cabins) instead of sipping champagne and playing roulette on magnificent ocean liners.

Long after Fritz passed, Lavinia made do with no air conditioning sweltering Southern summers. She finally threw in the towel when her financial advisor announced no more home visits until the Carolina slow-cooker had central air.

Who else is listening

There’s one final layer to the Jensen competition that’s not evident at first glance but Lavinia would have appreciated.

Soprano Felicia Moore won the Jensen prize at age 30 in 2018. Today, she’s making a full-time living as an opera with upcoming performances with the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. But at the time she won, she was just stepping out into the world after spending her entire adult life studying.

Raised in a middle-class family – her dad was a Led Zeppelin-loving carpenter and her mom worked in a veterinary hospital – Moore had to count every penny trying to make it in opera in NYC.

One thing she came to realize was that making it to the finals in a major competition such as Jensen can help your career even when you don’t win. “It’s also a chance to be seen,” she said, itself a huge benefit in a field crowded with top talent.

“Not only do you have the people who are judges, who are usually very prominent people in the industry, but a lot of people are already thinking about casting for their season, and they’re just sitting in and listening. So you’re not just singing for the judges, you’re singing for everybody else who’s in the audience that day.”

And for Lavinia Jensen.

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FFTC offers experience and expertise

Every dream needs a “back office” of sorts, and that’s where Foundation for the Carolinas comes in.

Lavinia Jensen had a dream to help young artists reach theirs, which led to the creation of the Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation. Now in its 26th year, the fund has awarded more than $1 million to aspiring young opera singers.

While small family foundations and donor advised funds like Jensen have a passion for funding grants that will make a difference in the lives of others, they don’t always have the time or experience to stay on top of the business side.

“The Foundation allows them to do the important work that they’re passionate about without worrying about if the tax return has been filed, who’s sending out board notices and making sure board officers have insurance,” said David Snider, FFTC vice president and program officer. Moreover, FFTC staff can help screen potential organizations to consider supporting to make sure they’re spending their donations effectively.

“These are the things that we can use our expertise and allow the board members to make the important decisions of how they want to impact the community.”

To learn more about the Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition: jensenfoundation.org

To learn more about how FFTC helps individuals and families: https://www.fftc.org/individual-family-giving