Posts Categorized: 2017 Season

Bass Anthony Robin Schneider in the Spotlight

We’re loving having this trilingual bass from New Zealand and Austria with us in (the other) Vienna this summer! Anthony takes the Filene Center stage this weekend as the Sacristan in Tosca.   We’re giving you a time machine: What period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why? I would love to

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Tenor Mackenzie Gotcher in the Spotlight

Mackenzie Gotcher makes his Wolf Trap debut as Cavaradossi in a new production of Puccini’s Tosca at the Filene Center on July 14, 2017.  He’s a self-confessed “dark and stormy” nerdy tenor who loves doing character research and discovering rare operas! What aspects of your role in this summer’s opera are natural fit with your personality and/or

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Mezzo Zoie Reams in the Spotlight

Rossini’s The Touchstone enjoys its final performance this coming weekend, and it features Filene Young Artist Zoie Reams as Clarice. We’re so glad she decided to choose music instead of Mandarin! If you hadn’t chosen this career, what would you have pursued instead? I began undergrad with a back up plan of being a Mandarin translator for

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Art and Love in the Crosshairs

Tosca is well into rehearsals, and we’re thrilled to have director Louisa Muller (Lucretia 2016, Ghosts of Versailles 2015) back at The Trap. Happy today to share her note from our 2017 Season Book. Tosca: Art and Love in the Crosshairs

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Tenor Alasdair Kent in the Spotlight

In honor of tonight’s opening of The Touchstone, I offer this interview with our lead Rossini tenor, who is quite a thoughtful guy. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back and learn a little more about his journey to becoming a professional opera singer! Which experience(s) most influenced your decision to become a professional singer? What’s the earliest

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Usher Gallery

Excitement was in the air last night at Union Market, as our UNTRAPPED partnership with Halcyon Stage took vivid form in The Fall of the House of Usher. Followers of WTO, Halcyon Stage and CityDance merged with Philip Glass fans and D.C. cultural mavens in a beautifully diverse audience that treated the performers to a rousing

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WTO & NSO

WTO fans who are in DC this weekend should be sure to catch Trapper J’Nai Bridges (WTO ’15,’16) in the National Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – a celebration of the NSO’s outgoing Music Director Christoph Eschenbach. This July, we’re thrilled that Gianandrea Noseda’s first concert as incoming Music Director will featured three other

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Getting Ready for Rossini

Forget miles per hour. Notes per second is usually a good way to think about our friend Rossini. What’s it like to prepare a role in which the vocal fireworks alone are a force to be reckoned with? Well, if you’re a thoughtful musician like Alasdair Kent, you somehow find yourself more absorbed by the

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The Virtues of Virtuosity

This rare comic opera by the young (20-year-old!) Rossini has really captivated us, and we can’t wait to put it on the stage. Today, I refer you to the digital version of a piece written by Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Roger Pines. Roger introduced me to La pietra del paragone over 20 years ago, and he’s kind

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