Toledo Opera Selects Resident Artists for 2024-2025

Toledo Opera will welcome Sarah Rachel Bacani (soprano), Emily Cotten (mezzo soprano), Brady DelVecchio (tenor) Robbie Raso (baritone), and Alessandro (Alex) Rotundo (pianist) as Resident Artists for the 2024-2025 season.

 

All five will serve as touring artists for the Opera on Wheels program which travels extensively, visiting local educational institutions and bringing live opera to the furthest reaches of the Toledo area. Annually, the program is performed for 20,000 students from Findlay to Ann Arbor and Sandusky to Archbold.

 

This season, the traveling production will be an adapted children’s opera of Beauty and the Beast, which is based on the original French fairytale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and inspired by the operas of André Ernest Modeste Grétry. Joshua Borths of James Madison University School of Music adapted the score and wrote the libretto. James M. Norman, Toledo Opera’s General Director, will direct the production. “The Resident Artist program has been around for 40 years and the caliber of artist we attract gets better every year. I am thrilled for the art and storytelling that we get to share with our young school audiences and our adult audiences on stage at the Valentine,” shared Norman.

 

Toledo Opera Artistic Director Kevin Bylsma added: “Toledo Opera has been blessed with exceptional Resident Artists in past seasons – the 2024-2025 roster is no exception. I am excited for the Toledo community to experience the immense musical and performing gifts that these young artists have to offer!”

 

The five will also perform Toledo Opera’s fall and spring tours of Opera Outdoors – a series of pop-up live performances at outdoor community hubs throughout Toledo. Vocal selections from the classical repertoire, along with musical theater and other American standards will be heard in the fall of 2024 and the spring of 2025.

 

The Resident Artists will also sing smaller roles in Toledo Opera’s mainstage productions of Tosca and South Pacific which are slated for this season.

 

Filipino-American soprano Sarah Rachel Bacani’s 2023–2024 season included covering the role of Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) at Central City Opera, where she also performed the role in their Family Matinee production as a Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program Apprentice Artist. There, she also gave a recital as part of their “Lunch & A Song” series and reprised the role of Juliette for the Indiana University Opera & Ballet Theater’s fall season. The 2022–2023 season saw Ms. Bacani’s professional debut, also with Central City Opera, in the role of Mariola in Heggie’s Two Remain. In the fall of 2022, she opened the IU Jacobs School of Music Opera Theater’s Conrad Prebys Performance Season in the role of Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni). Other notable IU Opera Theater performances include Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) in their centennial season and scenes as Leïla (Les Pécheurs de Perles), Micaëla (Carmen), and Fiordiligi (Così fan Tutte). In the 2023-2024 competition season, Ms. Bacani competed as a semi-finalist for both the Shreveport Opera Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year Competition and the Florida Grand Opera Young Patronesses of the Opera National Voice Competition. She is also the 2023 second-place winner of the National Society of Arts and Letters Indiana Chapter Competition, having previously won the organization’s Pock and Blumberg Merit Award. In concert, Ms. Bacani has performed the soprano solo in Britten's Les Illuminations, Mozart’s Requiem, and Getty’s The White Election. Hailing from Toms River, NJ, Ms. Bacani received her Performer Diploma and Master of Music in voice at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she studied under the tutelage of Jane Dutton and was awarded an Associate Instructorship. She received her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Cynthia Hoffmann.

 

Mezzo-soprano Emily Cotten graduated from Loyola University New Orleans with her masters in vocal performance in 2022. While at Loyola, she performed as La Ciesca (Gianni Schicchi), Mistress of the Novices (Suor Angelica), and Belinda (Dido and Aeneas). During the pandemic, she participated in Loyola's "Cura Personalis" project- premiering songs with words by librettist Jerre Dye and music by Dylan Trần. She received her Bachelor of Music at the University of Michigan, where she was an EXCEL grant recipient and performed in Bolcolm's Dinner at Eight and Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. She spent two summers as an Apprentice Artist with Opera in the Ozarks, where she performed roles such as Despina (Così Fan Tutte), Desiree Armfeldt (A Little Night Music), and Public Opinion (Orfee aux Enfers). Ms. Cotten is a member of the St. Thomas Bach Project, the May Festival Chorus, and has performed with Coro Volante. She is an avid believer that all people should have access to live music performance and music education and has worked in an administrative capacity with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. 

 

Tenor, Brady DelVecchio is known for his versatility on stage and screen. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, his career has brought him international acclaim for his portrayals of engaging romantic leads. Mr. DelVecchio attended The Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University and New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Since then, he has had the pleasure of portraying Le Prince Charmant (Cendrillon), Mercurio (La Calisto) Rektor/ Komár, Pasek (Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Tony (West Side Story), Nanki Poo (The Mikado) and Timothy Harper (Strike Up the Band). While performing traditional operatic, musical theater, and recital repertoire, he has had the privilege of premiering staged new works by Melissa Dunphy (The Gonzales Cantata. American Opera Theater), Richard Allan White (Hester. Center for Contemporary Opera) and Felix Jarrar (Fall of the House of Usher). Mr. DelVecchio’s upcoming work includes an Untitled Colin Mochrie Film by Nicola Rose, and a recital series at First Presbyterian Church in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he serves as tenor soloist. Mr. DelVecchio is incredibly thankful and excited to be the tenor resident artist at Toledo Opera for their 2024-2025 season. 

 

Robbie Raso is a graduate of the AJ Fletcher Opera Institute at University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the Eastman School of Music, and the Carnegie Mellon School of Music. Most recently, he performed the roles of Chrevreuse (Maria di Rohan) and Marcaniello (Lo frate 'nnamurato) at UNCSA. In the summer of 2023, Mr. Raso performed the roles of Enrico (Lucia di Lammermoor) and Dandini (La Cenerentola) with Mediterranean Opera Festival in Caltagirone, Sicily. Other performance highlights include Jack Absolute (The Rivals), Rodomonte (Orlando paladino), and Zebul (Jeptha) at UNCSA; Johannes "Pa" Zegner )Proving Up), Rapunzel's Prince (Into the Woods), and Ophèmon (L'amant anonyme) at Eastman; and Count Almaviva (Le Nozze di Figaro), Count Robinson (Il Matrimonio Segreto), and Papageno (The Magic Flute) at Carnegie Mellon University. He also originated the role of Border Guard (ID, Please) at the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival in London in 2017. In addition to singing, Mr. Raso is also an instrumentalist, having studied trombone since middle school.

 

Alessandro (Alex) Rotundo graduated from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in 2022, earning a B.M. in composition and piano, under the tutelage of Kevin Puts and Shirley Yoo. He earned his M.M. in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the Mason Bates studio, where he was also very active as a collaborative pianist. In addition, he received a regular High School Diploma in Piano Performance with honors from the National Guild of Piano Teachers of the American College of Musicians; completed the MTAC Certificate of Merit Advanced Level Exam with Honors, performing in MTAC Panel Audition State Panel Finals. He was also a violinist in California’s Peninsula Youth Orchestra up until 2018, and played upright and electric bass in the Hillsdale High School Jazz Ensemble. His first orchestral work, composed when he was 10, was premiered in May 2010 by the intermediate division of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. From 2014 to 2018, he studied composition with David Conte and violin performance with Monika Gruber and Joseph Maile at the Pre-College division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). He has won numerous composition awards, including the Peabody Institute's Otto Ortmann Composition Prize and the Multicultural Sonic Evolution Composition Competition.

 

For more information about the 2024-2025 Resident Artists and/or Opera on Wheels, please visit toledoopera.org. For media access, please contact Rachael Cammarn at rcammarn@toledoopera.org.