baritone

American baritone Thomas Meglioranza was a winner of the Walter W. Naumburg, Concert Artists Guild, Franz Schubert/Music of Modernity, and Joy in Singing competitions. His operatic roles include Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva, as well as Chou En-Lai in Nixon in China, Prior Walter in Peter Eötvös's Angels in America, and Pierrot in Die tote Stadt under the baton of Gil Rose. He has been an oratorio and pops soloist with many of the country’s major orchestras, and has sung Copland's Old American Songs with the National Symphony, Eight Songs for a Mad King with the LA Philharmonic, Bach cantatas with Les Violons du Roy, John Harbison's Fifth Symphony with the Boston Symphony, Milton Babbitt’s Two Sonnets with the MET Chamber Orchestra, and Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina with the Houston Symphony. Described in The New Yorker as “an immaculate and inventive recitalist” his Songs from the WWI Era program was one of the “Ten Best Classical Performances of the Year” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. His discography includes several acclaimed albums of Schubert lieder and French mélodies with pianist Reiko Uchida, orchestral songs of Virgil Thomson with BMOP, and Bach cantatas with the Taverner Consort. He is a graduate of Grinnell College and the Eastman School of Music and is a Visiting Artist at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.

An "immaculate and inventive recitalist" (The New Yorker), Mr. Meglioranza's evening of WWI-era songs at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society made the Philadelphia Inquirer's list of "Top Ten Classical Music Events of 2009" and enjoyed a sold-out run on the cabaret series of the Café Sabarsky in New York City. He made his Wigmore Hall debut in 2008, singing an all-contemporary American song program, and has recorded an acclaimed CD of Schubert songs with pianist Reiko Uchida.

Mr. Meglioranza's portrayal of Prior Walter in the North American premiere of Peter Eötvös's Angels in America with Opera Boston was described as "immensely touching" (The Boston Globe). Other opera performances include the title role in Don Giovanni with Julius Rudel and the Aspen Opera Theatre, and Chou En-lai in Nixon in China with Opera Boston. He frequently sings with the Mark Morris Dance Group, including the role Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas. He also created the title role in Gordon Chin's Mackay: The Black Bearded Bible Man in Taipei.

An avid singer of Bach, Meglioranza has sung many one-voice-per-part performances of the passions and cantatas with conductor Andrew Parrott, and has appeared with such Baroque groups as Philharmonia Baroque, Taverner Consort, American Bach Soloists, Apollo's Fire, Les Violons du Roy, Portland Baroque, Music of the Baroque. He has also sung pre-Baroque music with the Waverly Consort, Pomerium and the Liber Ensemble.

Mr. Meglioranza is an alumnus of Tanglewood, Aspen, Marlboro, and the Steans Insititute at Ravinia. He is of Thai, Polish and Italian heritage and currently resides in Manhattan. His interests include cooking and running.

Performances

Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | November 18, 2016
Distler Performance Hall at Tufts University | September 27, 2009
Cutler Majestic Theatre | March 12, 2004, March 14, 2004
Cutler Majestic Theatre | March 12, 2004, March 14, 2004

News and Press

[CD Review] Fanfare reviews Virgil Thomson: Three Pictures

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) is an American composer often talked about and referred to, but infrequently performed. The major record labels have pretty much ignored him, though smaller labels have done a reasonable job in representing his music. This disc, from the label of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, is a significant addition to the Thomson discography.

Fanfare Full review
[CD Review] Fanfare reviews Virgil Thomson: Three Pictures

For many (myself included), the music of Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) is an acquired taste. Originally I was rather put off by the harmonic simplicity (and occasional banality) of his dominant musical language – a language built almost exclusively upon simple hymnal harmonies and American folk rhythms. However, as the years have passed, I have come to deeply admire music of his work, and several pieces have become true favorites that I listen to often.

Fanfare Full review
[CD Review] CLOFO reviews Virgil Thomson: Three Pictures

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The Harvard music department has certainly produced its share of distinguished American composers, including John Knowles Paine (1839-1905), Arthur Foote (1853-1937), John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), and Walter Piston (1894-1976). But none was more influential than Mid-Westerner Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), who went on to study with Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) in Paris during the 1920s.

Classical Lost and Found Full review
[CD Review] "Pictures" seldom played

For those who like to stump their musical friends with the old guess-the-composer game, a good puzzler would be “Sea Piece With Birds.”

This 1952 orchestral work, some four minutes of somber, heaving music, is thick with chromatic chords that move in big parallel blocks, with skittish atonal themes mingling hesitantly above. The atmospheric orchestral colors suggest strangely updated Debussy. A frenetic climax sounds like some ornery blast of Varèse.

The composer?

The New York Times Full review
[Concert Review] Florestan, BMOP offer sublime tribute to vocal music

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project had a good idea last weekend. They paired with the Florestan Project, a superb vocal group, to present three days of concerts named “Voice of America” at Tufts University’s Distler Performance Hall. Florestan presented the complete songs of Samuel Barber, some 75 in number. The Sunday afternoon concert I attended then featured a chamber-music-sized BMOP with concerted songs of Samuel Barber and Virgil Thomson. Florestan and BMOP together offered a sublime tribute to the voice.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer Full review
[Concert Review] Angels in America

By calling his drama Angels in America “a Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” Tony Kushner implies that his two-part, seven-hour saga about America’s response to Aids operates like a musical work; perhaps he even envisioned that it might one day be turned into an opera. That day came in 2004 when the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös’s opera had its premiere at the Châtelet in Paris. That a long play had been transformed into a shortish opera (2? hours) provoked little dissent, but critics held that Eötvös’s music lacked a strong profile.

The Financial Times Full review
[Concert Review] Some Angels: Opera Unlimited does Tony Kushner

Whatever anyone thinks of the actual opera, congratulations are again in order to Opera Unlimited, the collaboration between music director Gil Rose’s Opera Boston and his Boston Modern Orchestra Project, this time for bringing to Boston the American premiere of Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös’s attempt to make an opera out of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, his Pulitzer-winning play about the AIDS epidemic and the collapse of public and personal values under Reagan (one remaining performance, June 24 at the Majestic Theatre).

The Boston Phoenix Full review
[Concert Review] "Angels in America," already operatic, is now presented as an opera

Much of life is spent thinking about death. Primary in our thoughts are the rate of its approach and hour of its arrival. It is a little like driving a car whose accelerator and brakes are out of our control. This idea may explain the public’s hideous and enduring fascination with executions and suicides, for in both cases time races and the date is set. People are in control.

The New York Times Full review
[Concert Review] Soul-searching fills musical "Angels"

Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is an epic, historical, political, personal , and apocalyptic drama that is also an opera waiting to happen. It is full of larger-than-life characters who deliver long aria-speeches of interior questioning; characters meet each other in dream landscapes and there are interwoven, simultaneous episodes that resemble operatic ensembles. There is even a grand death scene.

The Boston Globe Full review
[News Coverage] Troupe to premiere "Angels"

To write a concerto for an indigenous instrument may be an obvious way to create a multicultural piece, but it is not the easiest. Most folk instruments don’t have the power to compete with an orchestra, although electronics can help; most also involve tunings that can’t mesh with the compromises of the well-tempered Western scale.

The Boston Globe Full review
[Press Release] Opera Unlimited presents the North American premiere of "Angels in America" in Boston, June 16-25, 2006

Opera Unlimited presents the North American premiere of Peter Eötvös's Angels in America, with a libretto by Mari Mezei, based on the play by Tony Kushner. Performances take place on June 16, 17, and 20 at 8:00 pm and June 24 at 3:00 pm in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Full review