Vinson Cole

Last updated

Vinson Cole (born November 21, 1950) is an American operatic tenor.

Contents

Early life

A native of Kansas City, the tenor studied at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; the Philadelphia Musical Academy; and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Margaret Harshaw.

Singing career

He made his European debut in Angers, France in Handel's Acis and Galatea and followed that with the role of Belmonte in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio with the Welsh National Opera. In 1977, his youthful promise was recognized when he won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the WGN Competition, and was awarded both Rockefeller Foundation and National Opera Institute grants.

As his career unfolded, he went on to sing leading roles in many major opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Opéra National de Paris and Paris Opera-Bastille, Teatro alla Scala, and the theatres in Berlin, Vienna, and Hamburg. For nine years, he sang at the Salzburg Festival. In the United States, he has sung with the New York City, Seattle, Houston, Santa Fe, and St. Louis opera companies.

In 1997, he returned to open the season at La Scala as Renaud in Gluck's Armide with Riccardo Muti conducting. He made his Chicago Lyric Opera debut in the title role of Mozart's Idomeneo in 1998 and his debut with the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in 1999 in another Mozart title role, La Clemenza di Tito. In the 2001 season, he returned to the Met as Alfredo in La traviata opposite the Violetta of June Anderson.

Cole is closely identified with the French repertory. He began moving in that direction in 1984, after he sang in the Manon centennial performances at Paris's Opéra Comique. Not long afterward, he sang the tenor version of Gluck's Orphée in Seattle, after which many other French works came his way: Lakmé, Werther, Carmen, Don Carlos, Faust, and La damnation de Faust.

Cole has sung extensively with orchestras throughout his career and has worked with many of the world's leading conductors including Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti (with whom he recorded the Mozart Requiem on the 200th anniversary of the composer's death), Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, Kurt Masur, James Levine, Edo de Waart, Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson Thomas, Gerard Schwarz, Andrew Davis, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Claudio Abbado, and Daniel Barenboim.

Teaching

Cole has taught at the University of Washington School of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music and at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He has also conducted masterclasses for the San Francisco Opera's Merola Program and the Canadian Opera Company. He is currently a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music, Conservatory of Music and Dance at UMKC and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Mr. Cole resides in Mission, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leyla Gencer</span> Turkish-Polish operatic soprano

Ayşe Leyla Gencer was a Turkish operatic soprano.

Margaret Anne Marshall OBE is a Scottish soprano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheryl Studer</span> American dramatic soprano (born 1955)

Cheryl Studer is an American dramatic soprano who has sung at many of the world's foremost opera houses. Studer has performed more than eighty roles ranging from the dramatic repertoire to roles more commonly associated with lyric sopranos and coloratura sopranos, and, in her late stage, mezzo-sopranos. She is particularly known for her interpretations of the works of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Diego Flórez</span> Peruvian liric tenor (tenore di grazia)

Juan Diego Flórez is a Peruvian operatic tenor, particularly known for his roles in bel canto operas. On June 4, 2007, he received his country's highest decoration, the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Sun of Peru.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jozef Kundlák</span> Slovak tenor (born 1956)

Jozef Kundlák is a Slovak tenor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Merritt</span> American tenor (b. 1952)

Chris Merritt is an American tenor.

Rockwell Blake is an American operatic tenor, particularly known for his roles in Rossini operas. He was the first winner of the Richard Tucker Award.

Ferruccio Furlanetto is an Italian bass. His professional debut was in 1974 in Lonigo, he debuted at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1979, in a production of Verdi's Macbeth, conducted by Claudio Abbado. He has gone on to sing numerous roles, including both Don Giovanni and Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Philip II in Verdi's Don Carlos, Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Zaccaria in Verdi's Nabucco, Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust, Orestes in Strauss' Elektra, Fiesco in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the title role of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, as well as many other roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco Araiza</span> Mexican tenor (born 1950)

José Francisco Araiza Andrade is a Mexican operatic tenor and lied singer who has sung as soloist in leading concert halls and in leading tenor operatic roles in the major opera houses of Europe and North America during the course of a lengthy career. Born in Mexico City, he studied singing at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música de México and later in Germany, with Mozartian tenor Richard Holm, and lieder interpretation with Erik Werba. He made his operatic debut in 1970 in Mexico City as First Prisoner in Beethoven's Fidelio. Araiza initially came to international prominence singing in Mozart and Rossini operas, but in the 1980s broadened his repertoire to include Italian and French lyric tenor roles and Wagnerian roles such as Lohengrin and Walther von Stolzing. He was made a Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera in 1988. Now retired from the opera stage, he teaches singing and serves on the juries of several international singing competitions.

Barbara Frittoli is an Italian operatic soprano, specializing in operas by Verdi and Mozart. She has sung leading roles in opera houses throughout Europe and in the United States, such as La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Her signature roles include Mimì in La bohème, the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Desdemona in Otello.

Matteo Manuguerra was a Tunisian-born French baritone, one of the leading Verdi baritones of the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milijana Nikolic</span> Operatic mezzo-soprano

Milijana Nikolic is an operatic mezzo-soprano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giuseppe Filianoti</span> Italian lyric tenor from Reggio Calabria

Giuseppe Filianoti is an Italian lyric tenor from Reggio Calabria.

Neil Rosenshein is an American operatic tenor, who sang leading tenor roles in the major American and European opera houses. He created the roles of Aspern in Dominick Argento's The Aspern Papers and Léon in Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles.

Frank Lopardo is an American operatic tenor who was born in Brentwood, New York. Early in his career he specialized in the repertoire of Mozart and Rossini and later transitioned to the works of Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Francisco Gatell</span>

Juan Francisco Gatell (born November 28, 1978, in La Plata, Argentina Juan Francisco Gatell is an Argentinian operatic tenor who specialises in the bel canto repertoire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saimir Pirgu</span> Albanian opera tenor

Saimir Pirgu is an Albanian international opera singer (tenor). In 2014 he was awarded the Italian citizenship by the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano.

Alfredo Nigro is an Italian tenor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ildar Abdrazakov</span> Russian opera singer (born 1976)

Ildàr Amìrovich Abdrazàkov is a Russian bass opera singer. Honoured Artist of Russia (2021).

Delores Ziegler is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active international performance career since the late 1970s. A former resident artist at the Cologne Opera, she has performed leading roles with many of the world's best opera houses, including La Scala, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. She is currently a professor of voice at the University of Maryland. While she has performed a broad repertoire, she is widely admired for her performances in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss; particularly Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Idamante in Idomeneo, and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.

References

  1. "Vinson Cole". curtis.edu. Curtis Institute of Music. Retrieved 5 June 2020.