The Hope College Great Performance Series will end its season on a high note--literally, when it welcomes soprano Courtenay Budd on Tuesday, April 16, at 8 p.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel.

Experienced in both operas and recitals, Budd has won critical acclaim and competitions, including the 2001 Young Concert Artists International Audition, which is helping sponsor her performance.

"One of the fastest-rising young stars on the American opera stage," is how the "Boulder Daily Camera" described her. The "Washington Post" called her "touching and hilarious as an actress, and vocally just right for Zerlina," in its review of "Don Giovanni."

Budd is a favorite at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in South Carolina, where she has appeared several times. This year she returns to the festival to premiere a work by Oswaldo Golijov with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. She has also performed frequently with Charles Wadsworth on the Musical Masterworks Series.

Her operatic experience includes Amy in Adamo's "Little Women" and Lady in Waiting in the first American staging of Britten's "Gloriana," with Central City Opera. She has also performed with the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, the Atlanta Opera, the Tulsa Opera, Opera/Omaha, and at the Opera Festival of New Jersey.

"Opera News" has said that Budd has "more color and volume than the typical coloratura protagonist."

Budd was awarded a grant from the William Matheus Sullivan Foundation in 2001. She was National Finalist in the 1998 Metropolitan Opera Auditions, winner of the 1996 Liederkranz Foundation Award, and winner of the 1996 Center for Contemporary Opera International Competition in New York, where she also won the Audience Favorite Award.

While in Holland, Budd will visit with children at Longfellow Elementary school to talk about opera, and will work with Hope College voice students.

More information about Budd, including sound clips, can be found at her Web site at www.courtenaybudd.com.

Tickets for the Great Performance Series are $14 for regular adult admission, $12 for senior citizens and $5 for children under 18. Tickets can be purchased at the theatre lobby ticket office in the DeWitt Center beginning Monday, April 8. The ticket office is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m., and can be called at (616) 395-7890. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Dimnent Memorial Chapel is located on the College Avenue at 12th Street. The DeWitt Center is located on Columbia Avenue at 12th Street.