Posts Tagged: alumni

Bel Canto al fresco

(a.k.a. Beautiful Singing in the Great Outdoors). The August 24 Greatest Hits concert will contain some full-blooded verismo and grand opera, but it will also offer elegance and nuance. Lawrence Brownlee will sail the High C’s with Tonio’s aria from La fille du regiment, Tracy Dahl will spin out Bellini’s “Ah non credea”, Stephanie Blythe

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Homecoming: Eric Owens

Eric has been in the opera world news a lot this year, what with his recent Doctor in Wozzeck at Santa Fe, and his Alberich at the Met this spring. He’s wedging in our concert between Santa Fe and a Tanglewood concert with the BSO, and DC-area audiences will get a chance to hear him

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Homecoming: Emily Pulley

Emily and I spent a good deal of time together at WTOC, as I seem to have been assigned to play most of the shows in which she sang. There were Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, First Lady in The Magic Flute (that’s a lot of Mozart!) and, most memorably

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Grownup Singing

Every summer, the WTOC presents emerging professional singers, typically in their mid-late 20’s and early 30’s. There are many joys in this, but it means that we don’t often traffic in what some of our alumni call “Big Boy/Big Girl” rep. (Yeah, I’m talking about you, Ms. Goerke, who ditched us to go sing freakin’

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Homecoming: Carl Tanner

Carl is unique among the alumni on the upcoming August 24 concert, for he was a member of an Associate Artist program run for two years in the 1980’s.  That program was an early precursor for our current Studio Artist program, as it was focused on singers at a slightly earlier phase of their careers.

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Homecoming: James Valenti

James sang what was to become one of his signature roles at Wolf Trap in 2004; Rodolfo in La bohème. In another first for the WTOC, that Bohème represented our first cover-to-cover full opera done with the National Symphony Orchestra. When James returns to the Filene Center stage on August 24, he’ll sing the anthem

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Having to Choose

We pulled together 14 alumni of the Wolf Trap Opera Company for the exciting anniversary concert at the Filene Center on August 24, 2011. Opera’s Greatest Hits will cover all 4 decades of the Company’s history and reach across hundreds of years of iconic opera arias and ensembles. As luxurious as this is, my only

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A Musical Memorial Day Weekend

An unexpected (and lovely) surprise for my Memorial Day weekend: I thought I’d be spending it with Wolf-Ferrari, but tonight and tomorrow night, I have some additional companions… WTOC alum Paul Appleby was invited by Garrison Keillor to sing on A Prairie Home Companion at Wolf Trap this weekend, and I was in turn invited

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From the Trap to Walhalla

The LA Opera Ring opened last weekend, and it boasts a nice selection of Trappers turned Wagnerians.  Below, the list of seven WTOC alums who appeared in Saturday night’s Rheingold.   Several of them return throughout the Ring, and they are joined by Alan Held as Gunther in Götterdämmerung. Richard Paul Fink, Alberich Michelle DeYoung, Fricka

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A Highly Subjective and Unapologetically Random Look Back at the GRAMMYs

Thanks to our Best Opera Recording nomination for Volpone, we were in the slightly surreal and truly wonderful position of being able to attend last Sunday’s GRAMMY festivities in LA, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t file some sort of report.  So… Wolfie Goes to LA! 80% of Success… Yes, the classical music industry

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