Tenor, Soprano Clear Hurdle on Road to Met

Robert J. MacNeil, a 28-year-old tenor from La Palma, won top honors for the second consecutive year Saturday at UCI Fine Arts Concert Hall in the annual Orange County District Metropolitan Opera Auditions.

MacNeil, who last year advanced to the national finals in New York, won the $500 William J. Gillespie Scholarship Award, provided by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

Soprano Maryanne Mancini, 32, of Huntington Beach won the $300 second-place award, donated by Bobby J. Towers. MacNeil and Mancini will advance to the regional competition Oct. 31 at USC. (The preliminary round is closed, but the finals the following day will be open to the public. Tickets are $20. Information: [213] 740-7111.)

Tenor Chad Berlinghieri, 24, of Orange won the $200 William John Conlon third-place award. He will attend the USC event as an auditor, as will mezzo-soprano Diana Cantrelle, 30, of Laguna Hills, who won the $150 Florence R. Schumacher fourth-place award, given in memory of Nunzio Crisci. Soprano Shu-Jen Kuo, 31, of Irvine, won a $100 encouragement award.

Six vocalists competed for a chance to win the ultimate prize of $10,000 and a concert appearance with the Met. Judging the local competition were Henry Price, a former New York City Opera tenor who has sung at the Met; Robert Croan, a music professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa., and music critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; and Josephine Lott, a faculty member at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Ganz, Austria, and also at Cal State Long Beach.