Spotlight Sunday - Lisa Williamson
The Tender Land Tickets are on sale! You can buy your tickets through our website. What better way to celebrate how excited we are for this amazing production than to feature our Laurie Moss, Lisa Williamson. You can see Lisa and the entire cast on stage at the Aetna Theatre at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art on June 2 & 4. In the mean time, here is a little about Lisa.
Described by the Washington Post as “silvery of voice” and “a showstopper” for her recent performances with Washington National Opera as The Rose in The Little Prince and The Flamingo in the world premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s The Lion, the Unicorn and Me, soprano Lisa Williamson is a versatile singer who has forged a diverse career that has taken her around the world from Muscat, Oman to the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall to the Indianapolis Brickyard.
This season she returns to the New Haven Symphony Orchestra to sing Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and makes her debut with Portland Opera in a double bill of David Lang’s the difficulty of crossing a field and the little match girl passion singing Virginia Creeper and the soprano soloist. She recently returned to Opera Theater of Connecticut as Adele in Die Fledermaus and as Musetta in La Bohème and to The Glimmerglass Festival as the soprano soloist in the world-premiere staging of the little match girl passion. Other past highlights include Maud Dunlop in The Music Man at the Royal Opera House, Muscat in Oman, Despina in Così fan tutte and Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Yale Opera, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi with Connecticut Concert Opera, and Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro with Salt Marsh Opera.
On the concert stage she has appeared with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Italy singing Eileen Sherwood in Wonderful Town, with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra singing highlights from La Bohème, and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra singing Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras, No. 5 for Soprano and 8 Cellos.
Lisa is an active recitalist who was a finalist in the 2015 Mary Trueman Vocal Competition, was featured in The Song Continues at Carnegie Hall and is the recipient of the 2015 Marc and Eva Stern Fellowship at Songfest. She frequently performs recitals throughout the Eastern US.
From 2005-2010, Ms. Williamson was the vocal soloist with The United States Coast Guard Band. In this high-profile position she sang for Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet Members, Senators, and Congressmen. In 2006 and 2007 she performed the National Anthem at the Indianapolis 500 for live audiences of over 400,000 and millions on television world-wide. In her more than two hundred performances with the Coast Guard Band she performed in thirty-four states in the U.S. and throughout Japan singing patriotic songs, opera arias, classical chamber works, and the American Songbook. She is featured on six Coast Guard Band recordings.
Ms. Williamson holds a Master of Music in voice from the Yale School of Music, as well as a Performer’s Certificate from the University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Music in voice performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University. She has been a young artist at The Glimmerglass Festival, Chautauqua Opera, and Connecticut Opera and has been an award winner in competitions with The Metropolitan Opera National Council, Connecticut Opera Guild, and Annapolis Opera.
Lisa, the daughter of premiere military band musicians, is a native of Alexandria, Virginia. She now makes her home in Connecticut with her husband, Lieutenant Commander Adam Williamson, the director of the United States Coast Guard Band. Find out more at www.LisaWilliamsonSoprano.com.
Here is what Lisa said about opera without borders:
I believe there is an opera for everyone; whether you like slapstick comedy, spectacular over-the-top high drama, elegant classicism, subtle introspection, or even abstract modernity. The hardest part today is getting people in the door the first time. So for me, Opera Without Borders means to tear down the walls, both literal and figurative, so that it isn't "us versus them", so that it doesn't feel so foreign, and so that no matter what language you speak or how you communicate you can have a transformative experience.
