Baritone Will Liverman in Cathy Heifetz Memorial Concert, Mandel Hall, University of Chicago Sunday, June 2, 2013 3 PM

Will Liverman (Rebecca Fay)

Cathy Heifetz Memorial Concert
University of Chicago
Department of Music
Sunday, June 2, 2013 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Mandel Hall, 1131 East 57th Street, Chicago, ILFor a gala culmination to the 2012-2013 season, the University Chorus and Motet Choir join the USO to present a perennial favorite: Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, a “scenic cantata” based on 24 Medieval poems. Soloists Patrice Michaels, soprano, Ian McEuen, tenor, and Will Liverman, baritone, join the 250+ musicians on stage. The program opens with Antonin Dvorák’s exhilarating Carnival Overture and Josef Suk’s delightfully melodious Scherzo Fantastique.

Will Liverman Bio

Praised by the New York Times as “mello-voiced and charismatic” and Opera News for his “noble sound and bearing,” baritone Will Liverman is the winner of a 2013 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. In the 2012-13 season, he joined the Lyric Opera of Chicago as a member of the prestigious Ryan Opera Center. He made his debut as Brühlmann in Werther and, in his first season with the company, sang the Sargeant in La bohème as well as covers Schaunard in the same opera and Marullo in Rigoletto. He also joins the company in scenes from La traviata in its Stars of the Lyric concert at Millennium Park conducted by Stephen Lord. In the spring, he makes his role debut as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Utah Opera and joins the University of Chicago as a guest artist for his first performances of Orff’s Carmina Burana. This past summer, he joined the Civic Orchestra of Chicago under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis in scenes of La bohème and Le nozze di Figaro. He returns to the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 2013-14 season, where he will sing Figaro in special family performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia as well as Fiorello in the same opera, Marquis in La traviata, the Registrar in Madama Butterfly, and Yvan in Die Fledermaus. He also joins the company for covers of the Falke in Die Fledermaus, Hunter in Rusalka, Montano in Otello, and Yamadori in Madama Butterfly.

Mr. Liverman was a grand finalist of the 2012 Metropolitan Opera National Counctil auditions in which he sang “Batter my Heart” from Adams’ Doctor Atomic and Papageno’s suicide aria from Die Zauberflöte with Sir Andrew Davis conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Also in 2012, he earned his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, at which he sang the leading role of James Meredith in Peter Maxwell Davies’ opera, Kommilitonen!, under the direction of the work’s librettist, David Poutney. Previously at The Juilliard School, he sang Marco in Gianni Schicchi and Liberto in L’incoronazione di Poppea. 

Other recent performances for the baritone include the Protestant Minister in Menotti’s The Last Savage as well as the cover of Schaunard in La bohème with Santa Fe Opera as an Apprentice Artist; Sacristan in Tosca and Mr. Jenks in The Tender Land while a Young Artist at the Glimmerglass Festival; and the title role of Gianni Schicchi, Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte, and John Brooke in Mark Adamo’s Little Women at the Brevard Music Festival. He made his Alice Tully Hall debut with the New York Festival of Song, collaborating with Steven Blier on a program entitled, “Road Trip.”