Doris Yarick-Cross
artistic director
Professor in the Practice of Voice. Chair of the voice and opera department, Doris Yarick-Cross has appeared with major opera companies in the United States, including the San Francisco, Chicago Lyric, and New York City operas, as well as companies in Europe, Australia, and Canada.
She spent sixteen years in Germany, where she sang leading roles in major opera houses. She has sung with the symphony orchestras of Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Quebec, Toronto, and San Francisco, and with the New York Philharmonic. She is well known as a recitalist and has appeared in hundreds of concerts across the country.
Before coming to Yale in 1983, she served on the faculty of the University of Texas and was head of the voice department at the University of Connecticut.
Janna Baty
voice
Assistant Professor (Adjunct) of Voice. Janna Baty, soprano, has garnered accolades internationally in her exceptionally versatile career. Recent engagements include appearances with the Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Tallahassee Symphony, Hartford Symphony, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá (Colombia), Eugene Opera, Opera North, and Boston Lyric Opera. Equally at home in standard repertoire and new music, she appears regularly with such noted contemporary ensembles as Collage New Music, Auros Group for New Music, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
She has sung under Seiji Ozawa, Michel Plasson, Carl Davis, Robert Spano, Steuart Bedford, and Christopher Lyndon Gee, among others. She has appeared with the Aldeburgh and Britten festivals in England, the Semanas Musicales de Frutillar Festival in Chile, and the Tanglewood and Norfolk festivals in the United States. Winner of several international competitions, most notably the XXI International Music Competition “Dr. Luis Sigall” (Chile), Professor Baty is also an accomplished recitalist and chamber musician. She has given concerts across Europe, the U.S., and South America, in the company of such distinguished musicians as violist Nobuko Imai, pianists Claude Frank and Peter Frankl, and guitarist Stephen Marchionda.
She has worked alongside many composers, including Bernard Rands, Sydney Hodkinson, Peter Child, Christopher Lyndon Gee, Fred Lerdahl, Yehudi Wyner, and John Harbison, in performances of their music. She can also be heard on Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s Naxos disc of works by Reza Vali. An alumna of Oberlin College and the Yale School of Music, she is married to acclaimed jazz guitarist and singer Doug Wamble.
Richard Cross
voice
Lecturer in Voice. Bass Richard Cross made both his European and his New York debuts in 1958. He has appeared with numerous opera companies, including those of San Francisco, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Madrid, Cologne, Hamburg, Budapest, and Washington, as well as with the New York City Opera.
Mr. Cross has appeared at the Glynebourne Festival, the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and the Schwetzingen Festival. He has sung with many of the major symphony orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Pittsburgh.
Mr. Cross has recorded for London Records, RCA, and Columbia. He is currently on the faculties of the Juilliard School and State University of New York at Stony Brook. He joined the Yale faculty in 1997.
Douglas Dickson
voice
Douglas Dickson received his B.A. degree from Princeton University and his M.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. He has performed in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout the United States. His performances have been heard on NPR stations in many states, Colombian National Radio, and ABC-T. As a vocal accompanist he has played for the master classes and studios of Sherrill Milnes, Renata Scotto, Régine Crespin, Carlo Bergonzi, and Licia Albanese.
Mr. Dickson has been accompanist or music director for productions at Quinnipiac College, the Yale School of Drama, Opera Theater of Connecticut, Connecticut Experimental Theater, and Shubert Opera. He was music director and conductor for Yale Opera’s spring 2000 production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. In 1997 and 1998 he performed and taught at the Itu Festival of Arts in Brazil, and has served for nine years on the faculty of Quinnipiac College. Mr. Dickson joined the Yale faculty in 1998.
voice and performance
Lecturer in Voice. Judith Malafronte, mezzo-soprano, has an active career as a soloist in opera, oratorio, and recital. She has appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the St. Louis Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Handel and Haydn Society, and Mark Morris Dance Group.
She has sung at the Tanglewood Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Utrecht Early Music Festival, and the Göttingen Handel Festival. Winner of several top awards in Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the United States, including the Grand Prize at the International Vocal Competition in Hertogenbosch, Holland, Ms. Malafronte holds degrees with honors from Vassar College and Stanford University, and studied at the Eastman School of Music, in Paris and Fontainebleau with Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, and with Giulietta Simionato in Milan as a Fulbright scholar.
She has recorded for major labels in a broad range of repertoire, from medieval chant to contemporary music, and her writings have appeared in Opera News, Stagebill, Islands, Early Music America Magazine, Schwann Inside, and Opus.
Timothy Shaindlin
opera coach
Timothy Shaindlin, a native of New York City, joined the Yale School of Music faculty in September 2008. After studies at Indiana University, he worked for New York City Opera, Washington National Opera, San Diego Opera, Wolf Trap Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, and recently completed a 15-year stint with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he also coached for the Ryan Opera Center for American Artists. He has also coached for Glimmerglass Opera, Sarasota Opera and Hawaii Opera Theatre, where he recently conducted Sondheim's A Little Night Music.
In Europe, he worked for Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu and played five summers of master classes for Tito Gobbi. He has also played classes and coachings for such artists as Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Beverly Sills, Marilyn Horne, Natalie Dessay, Ben Heppner, Luciano Pavarotti, Zinka Milanov, Eleanor Steber, Samuel Ramey, Regina Resnik, Regine Crespin and Federica von Stade. In 2007 he prepared War and Peace for the Metropolitan Opera.
Marc Verzatt
acting and body movement
Lecturer in Voice and Opera. A stage director, Mr. Verzatt maintains an active career directing opera, operetta, and musical theater throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. He began his theatrical career as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera after studying drama at Rutgers University and ballet with New Jersey’s Garden State Ballet. After several seasons as a soloist with the MET Ballet, he left to continue his education in production as a stage manager with the Cincinnati Opera and Pittsburgh Opera companies.
He made his professional directing debut with a production of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann with Opera Columbus. He has since directed productions with the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and the opera companies of Fort Worth, Lake George, Madison, Arizona, Toledo, Atlanta, Kansas City, Baltimore, Idaho, and Mississippi.
In Austin, he directed both Puccini’s La Bohème and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Mr. Verzatt has taught and directed at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts and Notre Dame University. He has directed several Yale Opera productions, including Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in which he appeared in the role of Puck) for Orchestra Verdi in Milan, as well as five one-act operas in Sprague Hall, and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica at the Shubert Theater.
In 2005 he was engaged by the Metropolitan Opera for a speaking role in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. In 2006 he was named Outstanding Stage Director of the Year by Classical Singer magazine. He joined the Yale faculty in 2002.
James Taylor
Tenor James Taylor devotes much of his career to the oratorio and concert literature and is one of the world’s most sought-after Bach Evangelists. His career has taken him throughout the United States, South America, Japan, and Israel, and to virtually all the major concert halls of Europe including the Concertgebouw, Musikverein, and the Royal Albert Hall.
In recent seasons, Mr. Taylor made his New York Philharmonic debut in the Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion led by Kurt Masur, bringing a “sweet, light yet penetrating voice to the role of the Evangelist” (The New York Times). In addition to returning there for Handel’s Messiah, other highlights included Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Berlioz Requiem with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Mozart’s Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony, and Bernard Labadie and the Colorado Symphony. In Europe, he sang Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Helmuth Rilling in Leipzig, Berlin, Stuttgart, and Essen; Mendelssohn’s Paulus with Masaaki Suzuki in Utrecht and with Helmuth Rilling in Milan; and Emilio in Mozart’s Il sogno di Scipione with Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien in Vienna.
James Taylor can be heard on over 30 recordings. For Hänssler, he has recorded Dvorak’s Stabat Mater, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Magnificat, St. John Passion; and Handel’s Messiah with Helmuth Rilling. On the Harmonia Mundi label he has recorded Bach’s Easter Oratorio, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Mendelssohn’s Paulus under Philippe Herreweghe. New releases include Britten’s War Requiem with Helmuth Rilling for Hänssler; the Mozart Requiem with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra led by Andreas Delfs on Limestone Records; Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Nashville Symphony on the Naxos label; and the rarely heard Baroque opera Ariadne by Johan Georg Conradi with the Boston Early Music Festival led by Paul O’Dette on ArkivMusik.
A native of Houston, Mr. Taylor attended Texas Christian University as a student of Arden Hopkin. A Fulbright Scholar, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, where he graduated in 1993 with a Meisterklassendiplom. He is an associate professor of voice and coordinator of the vocal track in early music, oratorio, and chamber ensemble at the Yale School of Music.
Ted Taylor
Early Music Voice Coaching
Equally at home in the pit conducting a repertoire of over fifty operas and musicals or on the stage accompanying some of the world’s pre-eminent vocalists, Ted Taylor enjoys a varied international career. As pianist he has appeared with such luminaries as Sylvia McNair, Christine Schäfer, Ben Heppner, Kathleen Battle, Eileen Farrell, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Regine Crespin and Carlo Bergonzi, and as a conductor who has appeared with many American opera companies, he made his New York City Opera debut in 2003 conducting La Traviata.
Mr. Taylor has been a member of the conducting staffs of the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago and also served as music director of the New York City Opera National Company. In April 2009, he conducted the world premier of Libby Larsen’s Picnic for University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
He has recorded for Philips, CRI, BBC Worldwide and Leonarda labels.
In the field of contemporary opera, Mr. Taylor served as assistant to Academy Award winning composer Tan Dun for the premiere of his first opera, Marco Polo, at the Munich Biennale and prepared the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Tokyo Philharmonic orchestras for subsequent performances.
This fall marks his thirteenth year on the faculty of the Opera Program at Mannes College for Music in New York City and his seventh year with the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. He has guest conducted at such prestigious music schools as Indiana University and Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. This summer found him teaching for the third time in University of Houston’s seminar Le Chiavi del Bel Canto, and he returned for his sixth year as master coach for CoOPERAtive at Westminster Choir College in Princeton. Next spring he will return to coach and play at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Final Awards for the third year.
A native Texan, he makes his home in Manhattan, where he maintains an active studio as coach and teacher.
B.M., George Peabody College, Vanderbilt University; M.M., Indiana University
Emily Olin
Emily Olin began her career in Russia. It was there, working at State Academy of Arts for two decades, that she taught ‘The Art of performance’, style, interpretation and art song repertoire. Many of her students went on to become winners of national and international vocal competitions. Ms. Olin published numerous articles on style and interpretation in Vocal Music. In addition as piano accompanist she toured and recorded. She holds prestigious honorary titles and awards
.
Coming to the United States in 1992 she continued her work as a lecturer, vocal coach, pianist and accompanist. As a visiting faculty member at Yale Opera since 1996, she has been teaching ‘Russian for Singers’ at The Yale University School of Music. She maintains a private studio in New York where she coaches professional singers and helps in the development of their vocal classical repertoire.
Ms. Olin has a unique skill in preparing singers for the stage. She has a thorough knowledge and expertise of the Russian repertoire. Addressing not only the diction and technique specific to singing, she works on text, musical interpretation. Many of her students, and those who have come to her for consultation, have performed worldwide in premier opera houses and festivals.
In addition to teaching, Ms. Olin has continued performing, and serves on the jury of the International Doluhanova Art Song Competition “Amber Nightingale” in Russia.
In October 2012, Ms. Olin’s book Singing in Russian; A Guide to Language and Performance was published by Scarecrow Press.
Kyle Swann
Kyle Swann joined the Yale Opera faculty during the 2009-2010 academic year after serving as a staff pianist since 2007. He also currently serves on the faculty of the Hartt School of Music, where he teaches courses in diction, literature, accompanying, and conducting in addition to working as a vocal coach and conductor. He has also worked as a coach and conductor with Opera Theater of Connecticut, Mississippi Opera, and Connecticut Opera, among many others. He currently serves as the choirmaster and organist of Grace Episcopal Church in Hartford.
