mezzo-soprano

Lorraine DiSimone has performed extensively in concert as well as on the opera stage. Ms. DiSimone has sung with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Eduardo Mata, with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra under Keith Lockhart, and a concert performance of Wagner's Die Walküre with the Prague State Opera under Hans Wallat. She made her Carnegie Hall debut as Fenena in Verdi's Nabucco with the New York Grand Opera and since that time has been a soloist in Carnegie Hall in performances of Handel's Messiah, Mozart's C Minor Mass and Requiem, Beethoven's Mass in C, and Mascagni's Silvano. Her European debut was made in concert at La Fenice in Venice, singing a set of Virgil Thomson songs and Socrate by Satie. Since that time she has sung as soloist with the Augsburg Philharmonic in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and Songs of a Wayfarer, Berlioz's Nuits d'été, Romeo and Juliet and La Mort de Cleopatre, as well as Ravel's Sheherazade.

Ms. DiSimone has also been active in performing contemporary music in both Europe and the United States. She has performed with the Composers in Red Sneakers, Lincoln Center Outdoors, and Symphony Space concerts, and has been a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the Washington International Competition, and the American Opera Auditions. Ms. DiSimone has taught on the faculties of Clark University, Wake Forest University and the Berkshire Choral Festival. Ms. DiSimone's opera repertoire spans mezzo roles from Rosina in Barber of Seville, Preziosilla in Verdi's La Forza del Destino, Nancy in Britten's Albert Herring, Savitri in Holst's Savitri, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Wellgunde in Wagner's Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung, and Gerhilde in Die Walküre, as well as Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, The Queen in John Harbison's Full Moon in March, and Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible. She has performed with such companies as Glimmerglass Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Texas Opera Theater, Opera Idaho, Sarasota Opera, New England Lyric Operetta, Opera Boston, and Theater Augsburg.

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[CD Review] ClassicalCDReview Reviews John Harbison: Full Moon in March

Tour de force. I’ve been wading through a lot of contemporary dramatic music these days, mostly from a sense of duty—a very bad reason for learning—from Robert Grey’s “Navajo oratorio” Enemy Slayer to Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow, an opera on Frank Lloyd Wright’s marital irregularities and the awful horrifying destruction of the first Taliesin. I don’t consider either of these examples obviously terrible, but I would feel better for the current state of contemporary music if they were. Both show great craft and at least some talent.

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