Christopher Herbert – lyric baritone

Christopher Dylan Herbert sang exceptionally well, and his repressed, edgy characterization was just right.” Opera News – September 2010. This critical praise was garnered for his performance as Henrik in A Little Night Music with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis under the baton of Stephen Lord, which also marked his debut with that company. Other notable performances include the theatrical evening Proust’s Court of Love with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater, Sid in Britten’s Albert Herring, Pluto in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, both with Opera Vivente, Connie in Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Il prigioniero in Mascagni’s Il piccolo Marat in Avery Fisher Hall, William Williamson in Bolcom’s A Wedding at the Music Academy of the West, Aeneas with the Mark Morris Dance Group and Bronx Opera as well as Papageno in Magic Flute and Zurga in Les Pecheurs de Perles both with Central City Opera.

Christopher Herbert’s concert activities are equally prolific. He started his artistic year 2011 with an acclaimed Winterreise at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, under the auspices of Le Salon de Musiques Chamber Music Series and with its artistic director, François Chouchan, on the piano. This was followed by Puccini’s Missa di Gloria with the Brooklyn Symphony, and a duet recital with Heather Johnson and pianist Thomas Bagwell, for the Lotte Lehmann Foundation. Mr Bagwell had previously accompanied Christopher Herbert’s recital in Goldmark Hall at the Mannes College of Music in 2010, the year in which he also sang Monteverdi’s Vespers with the Saint Thomas Choir and Concert Royale in New York, Houston, Dallas and Nashville, Barber’s Dover Beach with the Hyperion String Quartet at the Sembrich Museum’s Concert Series, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with the Brooklyn Symphony and another acclaimed solo recital at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan. Mr Herbert also appears regularly as a soloist with Trinity Choir and Baroque Orchestra and with the acclaimed male classical vocal quartet New York Polyphony.

Mr Herbert made his Lincoln Center debut as the baritone soloist in Farewell to Music with the Christopher Caines Dance Company, and he also was the baritone soloist in Carmina Burana with the Handel Society of Dartmouth College. At the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, he performed recitals, opera scenes, and in master classes under the tutelage of such luminaries as Marilyn Horne, Warren Jones, Lotfi Mansouri and Christopher Larkin. He also appeared at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he performed in A Sondheim Celebration with the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart at Boston’s Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood’s Koussevitsky Music Shed. Further appearances at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall included Phoebus in Bach’s Cantata 201: Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan under Craig Smith, a song master class with James Levine, a fellowship recital of 20th century Finnish music, and an all-Stravinsky vocal chamber music concert.

Mr. Herbert holds a B.A. in Music and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Yale University and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.  He won an encouragement award from the Sullivan Foundation in 2007, third prize in the Kurt Weill Foundation’s Lotte Lenya Competition 2007, was a finalist in the Liederkranz Foundation Competition 2008, and won the Special Merit Award in the Gérard Souzay Competition 2009.