Vocal Quartet: Spring 2019

Sage DeAgro-Ruopp, from Traverse City, Mich., entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2017 and studies in the voice program with Marlena Kleinman Malas. All students at Curtis receive merit-based, full-tuition scholarships, and Ms. DeAgro-Ruopp is the Gianna Rolandi Annual Fellow.

A soprano, Ms. DeAgro-Ruopp has sung the roles of Bessie (Mahagonny: Ein Songspiel), Monica (The Medium), and Mélisande (Impressions of Pelléas) for the Curtis Opera Theatre; the Fairy (Cendrillon), Corilla (Viva la Mamma), and Morgana (Alcina) for the Oberlin Opera Theater. Also at Oberlin, she premiered Matthew Schreibeis’s The Sandburg Songs with the school’s contemporary music ensemble. She has performed as a soloist with the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra as the winner of their 2014 Concerto Competition, and she has appeared as a guest on A Prairie Home Companion.

Ms. DeAgro-Ruopp has attended the Chautauqua Institution and Oberlin in Italy, and she was named a YoungArts winner in 2014. She holds a performance diploma from Oberlin Conservatory. Her teachers have included Duane Mahy, Scott Skiba, and Marilyn Tilley. She began piano lessons at age six, dance lessons at age nine, and voice lessons at age ten.

Anastasiia Sidorova, from St. Petersburg, Russia, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2014 and studies voice with Patricia McCaffrey, adjunct faculty. All students at Curtis receive merit-based, full-tuition scholarships, and Ms. Sidorova is the Casiana Hilton Annual Fellow.

A mezzo-soprano, Ms. Sidorova won first prize in the 2015 Classical Singer Vocal Competition. She received the Encouragement Award at the Gerda Lissner Foundation Lieder/Song Competition in 2015, and she was the 2012 Third Laureate and 2011 Second Laureate in the Vivat-Talent International Contest and Festival in St. Petersburg. She joined Opera Philadelphia’s Emerging Artists Program in 2016, singing the role of Roggiero in Tancredi and covering the role of Dodo in Breaking the Waves. In the 2017–18 season, she continued as an Emerging Artist in the roles of Third Lady (Die Zauberflöte) and Mércèdes (Carmen).

For the Curtis Opera Theatre, Ms. Sidorova’s notable roles include Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Dido (Dido and Aeneas), Olga and Filippyevna (Eugene Onegin), Bianca (The Rape of Lucretia), Martha (Iolanta), Lucilla (La scala di seta), Dryad (Ariadne auf Naxos), Mother Goose (The Rake’s Progress), Rosette (Manon), and Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro). She participated in the Wolf Trap Studio Artist Program in 2018 and has also attended the Music Academy of the Westand the Verbier Music Festival in Switzerland

Dominic Armstrong has quickly established himself as an artist of superb musicality and characterization. This season, Dominic joins the Syracuse Opera singing Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth directed by R.B. Schather, joins the Florida Orchestra for Michael Tippett’s The Child of Our Time,  the Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra for an opera gala concert, and the Portland Symphony to sing in Rachmaninoff’s The Bells.  He will participate in a tour of the US with the Curtis on Tour and travel to France to perform Cavaradossi in Tosca with the conductor Emmanuel Plasson.

Last season, Dominic joined the Milwaukee Symphony for Bach’s Magnificat, Curtis on Tour for their annual touring initiative, Hudson Hall as Jo the Loiterer in The Mother of us All, and appears with both Los Angeles Opera and the Center for Contemporary Opera in a double bill of two Gordon Getty one-act operas, Usher House and The Canterville Ghost, as both Edgar Allen Poe and Duke Cecil of Yorkshire.  He also participated in a tour of Russia for the occasion of Leonard Bernstein’s centenary celebration with his wife, Ashley Emerson and under the baton of Maestro Mark Mandarano.

In recent seasons, Mr. Armstrong returned to Dayton Opera as Don José in Carmen and to the Lansing Symphony for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In January he joined Beth Morrison Projects for the New York City performances of Breaking the Waves. Previously, Dominic traveled to Russia to perform Britten’s War Requeim with the Russian National Orchestra and subsequently performed in a series of concerts, collaborating with Craig Rutenberg. He also made his company debut with Opera Colorado as Arthur Dimmesdale in the anticipated world premiere of The Scarlet Letter, sang the Second Jew in Salome with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and performed in recital with the Brooklyn Art Song Society. During the summer of 2016, Mr. Armstrong performed the role of Alfredo in La traviata with Chautauqua Opera.

Patrick Wilhelm, from Maplewood, N.J. and Lausanne, Switzerland, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2015 and studies voice with Julia Faulkner, adjunct faculty. All students at Curtis receive merit-based, full-tuition scholarships, and Mr. Wilhelm is the Lelia A. Wike Fellow.

Mr. Wilhelm has appeared as Sam (Trouble in Tahiti), Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas), Mr. Gobineau (The Medium), Bill (A Quiet Place), Zaretsky (Eugene Onegin), Pelléas (Impressions of Pelléas), Junius (The Rape of Lucretia) and the Black Cat (L’enfant et les sortilèges) with the Curtis Opera Theatre. An avid recitalist, he frequently performs on the Student Recital Series at Curtis. In the summers of 2015 and 2016, Mr. Wilhelm attended the Academié Internationale d’Éte, singing in classes with Dalton Baldwin and Lorraine Nubar. He attended the Salzburg Mozarteum in 2017 and has also participated in Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute.

Danish-born coach and accompanist Mikael Eliasen is artistic director of the Curtis Opera Theatre and the Hirsig Family Dean of Vocal Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. Since receiving his early training in Copenhagen, Montreal, and Vienna, he has collaborated with numerous singers in recital worldwide, including Robert Merrill, Tom Krause, John Shirley-Quirk, Elly Ameling, Edith Mathis, Florence Quivar, Mira Zakai, Sarah Walker, Joan Patenaude-Yarnell, and Curtis alumni Theodor Uppman, Michael Schade, and Rinat Shaham.

Mr. Eliasen has given master classes at Aix-en-Provence, the Shanghai Conservatory, Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Moscow), Jerusalem Music Center, and National Opera of Prague. He has a long association with the young-artist programs at the Royal Danish Opera and the Opera Studio of Amsterdam. In the United States, he works regularly at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, LA Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera; and is artistic advisor to Opera Philadelphia. He has recorded for Albany Records, CBC, Hilversum Radio, Polish State Radio, Kol Israel, Irish Radio and Television, London Records, MHS, and Supraphon. 

Mr. Eliasen was music director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 1994 to 1996 and artistic director of the European Center for Opera and Vocal Art in Belgium from 1984 to 1994. For twenty years he has taught at Chautauqua’s Voice Program during the summers. In 2013 he was appointed artistic adviser to Opera Philadelphia. Mr. Eliasen led the Young Artist Voice Program as part of Curtis Summerfest 2016.

Mr. Eliasen joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1986 and became the head of the department in 1988.

Born in Bratislava, Slovakia and raised in France and Canada, pianist and conductor Miloš Repický is on the music staff of the Metropolitan Opera. At the Met he has played harpsichord continuo for Le nozze di Figaro and has led the musical preparation of Jenufa, Anna Bolena, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, among many other operas. He has collaborated with the Cleveland Orchestra on productions of Pelléas et Mélisande and The Cunning Little Vixen, with the Lincoln Center Festival on Daphne, and with the Joffrey Ballet on Bluebeard’s Castle and The Miraculous Mandarin. He has also worked with the Canadian Opera Company, Houston Grand Opera, Orquesta Nacional de Galicia, Royal Opera House Muscat in Oman, San Francisco Opera, the Spoleto Festival, and the Kennedy Center’s World Stages Festival; and is co-artistic director of Music for Montauk.

As a pianist, Mr. Repický has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, the Chicago Cultural Center, Montreal’s Jeunesses-Musicales de Canada, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. His performances have been heard on NPR, American Public Media’s Performance Today, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, New York’s WQXR Radio, and CUNY TV. He is the pianist on the Sundialtech Pictures multimedia DVD of Pierrot Lunaire, and conducted the score for the feature film The Bohemians, an adaptation of Puccini’s La bohème.

Mr. Repický studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Warren Jones, and at the Music Academy of the West, the Merola Program at San Francisco Opera, and the Banff Centre. He joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2016.