by Daniel Hathaway

Fresh from critically acclaimed performances at the Met and Hamburg Opera, tenor Alek Shrader will return to the Oberlin Conservatory, where he graduated in 2007, for a recital with pianist Keun-A Lee on Friday, March 1 at 8:00 pm in Warner Concert Hall. That performance coincidentally ushers in ten days’ worth of performances by esteemed singers: soprano Jane Eaglen sings Wagner with the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, March 2, baritones Thomas Hampson and Edwin Crossley-Mercer go head to head in separate recitals at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron and Baldwin Wallace in Berea on Sunday afternoon, March 3, and soprano Christine Brewer sings on the Mixon Masters Series at CIM on Thursday, March 7, followed by soprano Deborah Voigt on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series on Sunday, March 10.

We last spoke to Alek Shrader in 2009, when he sang Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Barber of Seville with the now-defunct Opera Cleveland (download that article here). “Since then, I’ve worked a lot in Europe”, Shrader told us by telephone, “in Munich and Bordeaux — the majority of my European gigs have been there — and I’ve also worked a few other places: in France in Lille and Toulouse, in England at Glyndebourne, in Germany in Hamburg. But the thing I really consider the high point has been my return to the United States when I sang in Chicago, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and then in New York with the Met. I made my Met debut last season in The Tempest by Thomas Adès. I’ve hit most of the major houses, and that was always the goal for my career — to work in the States.” [Read more…]