Alberto Vilar (Biography)

Alberto Vilar was born in New Jersey in 1940 to a Cuban father and a Puerto Rican mother. He spent his first nine years on his father's island, his next nine on his mother's, then moved to the United States and attended Washington and Jefferson University in Pennsylvania. His father was in the sugar business, but the family lost its wealth after the Cuban revolution.

Vilar served in the United States Army in Germany for two years, dedicating his spare time to increasing the size of his record collection - because he was already passionately interested in classical music. Indeed, he had wanted to become a conductor, but his father had discouraged him, and when the younger Vilar returned to the States he went into banking and investment. After fifteen years of experience with various companies, he became involved in the burgeoning technological industry and founded his own company, Amerindo Investment Advisors. "It was the right thing to do," he told the Associated Press in 1998. "We pioneered the management of emerging growth portfolios. We very quickly became big investors in Microsoft, Compaq, you name it - Intel, Oracle, Cisco."

The astonishing success of these enterprises is what put Vilar in a position to become the philanthropist he is today. In his mid-forties, he began to give university scholarships to deserving students; then, after a ski accident led to a series of operations that gave him insight into the workings of medical research, he began to donate large sums in this important area. At the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York he created the Alberto Vilar Center for Hand and Upper Extremity Research.

The music world, however, has benefited more than any other branch of human endeavor from Vilar's generosity. He has contributed vast sums to renovations at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to the establishment of young artist programs there as well as at the Washington Opera and the Los Angeles Opera, and to the creation of productions at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Salzburg Festival and in many other venues. He had an auditorium built at Washington and Jefferson University - his alma mater - and he sponsors a first-rate concert series there; he has given generously to the New York Philharmonic and other ensembles; he has bought the copyright to the Met's subtitle system and is having it installed in other theaters. And of course, he is now donating most of the prize money that is awarded each year at Plácido Domingo's Operalia competition.

The music world in general, the opera world in particular, and Operalia in a very special way, owe Alberto Vilar a great deal of gratitude for his continuing generosity and for his moral as well as material support for the arts, which are so often neglected by people who have the economic power to do something useful for them. To this modern Maecenas, all of Operalia's participants, judges and organizers - headed by Plácido Domingo himself - offer a resounding chorus of thank-yous.