For a group of Shepherd School of Music graduate students, summer 2025 offered more than just a change of scenery. It reshaped how they see their art, their craft and themselves. Thanks to the Margaret C. Pack Language Institute for Singers, vocal performance students going into the second year of the master’s program spent three immersive weeks in Florence, Italy, studying Italian at the Michelangelo Institute, exploring cultural landmarks and performing some of opera’s most iconic arias for international audiences.

The program is designed to deepen students’ fluency in a language essential to the operatic tradition. But the experience extended far beyond grammar lessons and vocabulary. It allowed the students to learn where the art form began, to forge close bonds with their peers and to perform with a new level of connection to the music.