News Release
May 2000
Renowned
baritone Donald Barnum will perform at "Come to our Cabaret,"
on Saturday, May 20, 8:00 p.m., in Peter Hall at Moravian College. This
informal evening will include a quartet of Barnum and friends along
with a special guest, 13 year-old Carl Kraus, boy soloist with the Metropolitan
Opera from the Magic Flute. Proceeds from the event will benefit the
Moravian College Piano Fund.
Barnum, a Bethlehem native, sang in Nativity Episcopal
Church Boys Choir from age 7 to 14. He is a frequent soloist with the
Nativity Church Choral Society at their spring and Christmas Messiah
concerts in Bethlehem.
Barnum is a baritone active in both the operatic and concert
fields. A graduate of Yale, he then studied with Martial Singher at
the Curtis Institute and received his Masters of Music Degree from the
Juillard School. He made his solo debut with the New York City Opera
as the Mandarin in Turandot and sang with them for over ten years. He
is presently a member of the Metropolitan Opera and has sung with the
Sante Fe, Glimmerglass and other opera companies around the country,
as well as Opera Metropolitana de Caracas in Venequela. He was the featured
baritone lead in Puccini’s Le Villi in New York’s Central
Part with the New York Grand Opera. Lately he has specialized in modern
music having done the US premier of Harvey Sollberger’s Passages
and the world premier of Lewis Spratian’s In Memoriam.
Other performances include the Lieder eine Fahrendes Gesellen
with Pioneer Valley Symphony, William Jennings Bryan in the Ballad of
Baby Doe with the Indianapolis Opera, Tosco with Anton Coppola and the
Bronx Arts Ensemble, several Mandarins in Turandot, including the National
Grand Opera and the baritone solos to Orff’s Carmina Burana, as
well as the role of Tonio in I Pagliacci for Opera Mobile. Recently,
he performed Monterone in Rigoletto with the Indianapolis Opera, Aldindoro
and Benoit in La Boheme and Count Capulet in Romeo et Juliette with
the Cincinnati Opera and Turandot, Meistersinger, Boris and Don Carlo
at the Metropolitan Opera. This spring he sang the baritone lead in
Catalan’s La Wally for the New York Verismo Opera Company. Internationally,
he sang the baritone solo in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the
Yale Alumni Chorus in their China tour. This season he will sing in
Aida, Moses und Aaron and Gotterdammerung at the Metropolitan Opera
in New York City.
Barnum is also well known as a choral conductor, serving
as choirmaster for the Schola Hebraeica. He prepared the New York Jewish
Choral Ensemble for concerts in the eastern United States as well as
their debut at the Royal Festival Hall, London. He has also prepared
choristers for the National Grand Opera the Center for Contemporary
Opera, as well as for the World Premier of the Mass for the 21st Century
by Carman Moore, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York.
Barnum is currently choirmaster for the series of recordings
of Jewish music, sponsored by the Milken foundation, due out in three
years. He has been organist and choirmaster for several churches in
the New York metropolitan area, and chose choirs for the Archdiocesan
Choir Festival. Barnum is presently Organist and Director of Music at
St. Charles Borromeo Church, Brooklyn Heights, and active in the preservation
of the 1880, thirty-six rank Odell tracker-action organ. This fall he
will be recording Christmas music with the St. Charles Borromeo Choir
to be released at Christmastime.
Appearing with Barnum at the Cabaret will be Dierdre Donovan,
soprano, who sings with the Opera Orchestra of New York. She is also
the organist at St. Margaret’s Church on the East Side of Manhattan.
She runs a program of providing entertainment for nursing homes and
senior residences in the New York City area. Deborah Milsom, alto, is
a soloist with regional US opera companies who sang in the Broadway
production of Phantom of the Opera. Tenor, Roger Ohlsen, is a regular
performer with the New York City Opera Company and also performs with
the Metropolitan opera.
"Come to our Cabaret" is sponsored by the Moravian
College Music Department and Music Alliance. Admission is $30 per person
or $50 per couple. A patron listing is $60 and an Octet (table of eight)
is $175.
Peter Hall is located in Moravian College’s Church
Street campus, Church and Main streets, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective
liberal arts college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its
founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college.
Visit the Web site at www.moravian.edu.
