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DONNA WOLVERTON, Artist Representative ● Beach Mill Road ● Great Falls, Virginia 22066
Tel: 703-757-9477 ● Cell: 703-477-9477 ● [email protected]● www.wolvertonartists.com
CARL HALVORSON
Tenor
Since his auspicious debut under the sponsorship of Young Concerts Artists, Mr. Halvorson has given over eighty solo
recitals in America and in Europe. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore
Hall (Songmaker’s Almanac), the Concertgebouw, New York’s Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y, the
National Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Gold Medal Artist Series at Ambassador Hall in Los Angeles. He has
also performed at the festivals of Spoleto, Aspen, Tanglewood, Aldeburgh, Bergen International, the Newport
Music Festival, the Carmel and Oregon Bach Festivals and the Grant Park Festival, and he has sung with notable
choral groups including Oratorio Society of New York, Cathedral Choral Arts Society in Washington DC and the
Baltimore Choral Arts Society. On opera stages, he has performed with Minnesota Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Boston
Lyric Opera, among others. In 2009, Mr. Halvorson made his company debut with Portland Opera and has since that
time performed numerous roles for the company including The Emperor (Turandot), Torquemada (L’Heure Espagnole),
Don Curzio (Le Nozze di Figaro, and The Reporter (Orphée) of Philip Glass. He looks forward to additional
assignments with Portland Opera including Normanno (Lucia di Lammermoor), 3rd Jew (Salome), and Dr. Caius
(Falstaff).
With a concert repertoire that extends from Haydn and Mozart to Britten and Honegger, Carl Halvorson is in high
demand on the concert stage. The tenor has performed with many major orchestras including the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic,
the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, the
Florida Philharmonic, and the Saito Kinen Orchestra. He has performed under the batons of distinguished conductors
such as James DePreist, Charles Dutoit, Claus Peter Flor, Raymond Leppard, Kurt Masur, Nicholas McGegen,
John Nelson, Seiji Ozawa, Helmuth Rilling, Gabor Hollerung, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, George Hanson, Tonu
Kalam, Grant Llewellyn and Hugh Wolff. Orchestral highlights performed by the tenor comprise Mendelssohn’s
Elijah and Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Honegger’s King David and Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis
and the Symphony No 9, Mozart’s Mass in C Major and Requiem, Dvorak’s Dimitri, and Rachmaninoff’s The Bells.
Other works include Handel’s Saul, the Messiah which Mr. Halvorson has sung with numerous orchestras coast-to-coast,
and Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus sung with the Bach Society of St. Louis and the Berkshire Choral Festival. Mr.
Halvorson has also performed Stravinsky's Les Noces along with the composer’s In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, and he
recently added Orff’s Carmina Burana to his repertoire in engagements with the Bangor Symphony (ME), the Acadiana
Symphony Orchestra (LA) and with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Halvorson gave the
American premiere of the Shostakovich Suite on Finnish Folk Tunes with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and recently
performed the Dvořák Requiem with the Florida Orchestra.
Heralded for his performances of the works of Benjamin Britten, Mr. Halvorson was invited to give the U.S. premiere
of Britten’s The World of the Spirit at Carnegie Hall. Also in concert, he performed Britten’s St. Nicholas, the War
Requiem, and the composer’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings which he toured throughout the United States with
the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble and reprised with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra in Spain. Britten operatic
engagements include The Rape of Lucretia and The Turn of the Screw at Berkshire Opera, and The Turn of the Screw
with the Fort Worth Opera and The Minnesota Opera. Writing of his performance as Peter Quint, Alan Kozinn of The
New York Times said “Carl Halvorson was a magnificent Quint. Physically and vocally agile, he moved easily through
the serpentine coils of Britten’s music, toying with coloration and vocal weight to make Quint what he must be: alluring
and grotesque in equal measure.” The tenor has also appeared with the Boston Lyric Opera, the Opera Theatre of St.
Louis, and the Washington National Opera. Mr. Halvorson recently toured to London’s Barbican Centre where he
performed the title role in Philip Glass’s opera Galileo Galilei. This past spring he traveled to Japan at the invitation of
Seiji Ozawa to cover the role of Aegesth in the Tokyo Opera Nomori production of Elektra and returns to Tokyo to cover
Elijah.
Mr. Halvorson’s performance of Haydn’s Creation was recorded on the Newport Classics label, as was his performance
of Cherubini’s Médée at Alice Tully Hall. For BMG Classics, he has recorded Paul Bowles’s The Wind Remains with
EOS Music. His lieder recording Despite and Still, with pianist Susan Almasi, is available on the Musical Heritage
Society label as is his performance for Portland Opera’s Orphée on the Orange Mountain Music label.