We are delighted to welcome to the Morry Reynolds Fund family as our Emerging Artist for 2019-2020 Karl Buttermann.

Meet Karl:

As a member of Virginia Opera’s 2019-2020 Herndon Foundation Emerging Artists Program, bass-baritone Karl Buttermann covers Ramphis in Aïda, sings Alidoro in La Cenerentola, and performs in the fall Education and Outreach Tour.

This past summer, he sang Leporello in a workshop production of Don Giovanni with North Carolina Summer Opera in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Last season, he performed the roles of Vierte Edle in Lohengrin and Norton in La cambiale di matrimonio as an Apprentice Artist with Opera Southwest in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also covered Heinrich in Lohengrin. In the fall of 2018, Mr. Buttermann covered Colline in La bohème with Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. That summer, he sang Timur in Turandot with NC Summer Opera, in which he was praised for his “rich and mellow basso cantante.” In the previous season, he performed the roles of Arkel in Impressions de Pelléas and Alidoro in La Cenerentola as a fellow with A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, also in Winston-Salem. In the summer of 2017, he sang the role of Betto di Signa in Martina Arroyo’s Prelude to Performance’s production of Gianni Schicchi in New York, NY. That spring, also with Fletcher, Mr. Buttermann performed the role of Capitán in Florencia en el Amazonas, in which the Winston-Salem Journal praised his “robust bass-baritone.” In addition to this performance with Fletcher, he also sang the role of Truffaldino in Aridane auf Naxos. In the summer of 2016, he portrayed the title role of Le nozze di Figaro in Italy at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival. In the previous season, Mr. Buttermann performed in productions of Così fan tutte and Street Scene with Peabody Opera Theater, singing the roles of Don Alfonso and Carl Olsen, respectively, in Baltimore, Maryland. In the summer of 2015, he portrayed William Jennings Bryan in Ballad of Baby Doe and sang Monterone in Rigoletto with The Janiec Opera Company at the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, NC. He also covered Sparafucile in Rigoletto. Other notable performances with Peabody include Sir Thomas Bertram in the U.S. premiere of the chamber opera Mansfield Park, Le Roi in Cendrillon, and Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In addition to these, past portrayals include Rabonnier in La rondine at the Chautauqua Institution Voice Program in Chautauqua, NY, and Antonio (Le nozze di Figaro) at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival.

On the concert stage, Mr. Buttermann debuted as the bass soloist in Handel’s Messiah with the Mozart Club of Winston-Salem in 2018. He was also a soloist with the Peabody Concert Orchestra in Haydn’s in 2014.

Mr. Buttermann graduated with a B.M. in Vocal Performance from Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University under the tutelage of Dr. Stanley Cornett in 2016, and graduated with a M.M. degree in Vocal Performance from The University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2018. He studies with Dr. Marilyn Taylor, who hails from IU Bloomington, just like Uncle Morry!

During the fall, Karl traveled across the Commonwealth with the Virginia Opera’s Fall Education and Outreach Tour performing in Goldie B. Locks and the Three Singing Bears. We so look forward to enjoying his performance as Alidoro in Cinderella.

 

Virginia Opera 2016-2017 Season

We are so happy to introduce our 2016-2017 Emerging Artist, Brandon Morales.

Meet Brandon:
Born in San Antonio, Texas, Christopher Brandon Morales has performed with many opera companies and venues across the United States, stretching from Portland, Oregon to the East Coast. Highlights include the title role of Don Giovanni, Escamillo in Carmen, Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea, and Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro. A recent graduate of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Brandon is highly active in the Ohio area performing with many regional companies including Dayton Opera, NANO Works, Cincinnati Chamber Opera, Queen City Chamber Opera, Clermont Philharmonic/Opera, and Cincinnati College-Conservatory. He has also been a featured soloist for Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra and Voices of the Commonwealth chorus in Northern Kentucky. He has recently completed an Artist’s Residency with with Toledo Opera where he was featured as the Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the Duke in Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, and Dr. Bartolo in the touring production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Other recent works include performing the role of Dr. Malatesta in San Antonio Opera Piccola’s Don Pasquale, and the roles of Friedrich von Telramund in Lohengrin and the Dutchman in Die Fliegende Holländer in concert with the Wagner Society of Cincinnati, where he is now part of their blooming Wagner studio.

Find Brandon with The Virginia Opera this year as the bass of quartet in The Seven Deadly Sins, Caspar (Cover) in Der Freischütz, Timur (Cover) in Turandot, and Dr. Bartolo (Cover) in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. As a wonderful bass baritone with a flair for acting, we know Brandon and Morry would be fast friends.

 

Virginia Opera 2014-2015 Season

We are delighted to present our 2014-2015 Emerging Artist, Keith Brown. Keith is a wonderful bass-baritone who hails from the midwest, just like Morry.

Meet Keith:

Bass-baritone Keith Brown is an active operatic performer who has appeared in a wide variety of operatic and concert repertoire. Originally from Beavercreek, Ohio, he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he studied with William McGraw and Kenneth Shaw.

As a member of Virginia Opera’s Emerging Artist program in the 2014-2015 season, he will sing the roles of First Soldier in Strauss’ “Salome,” Doctor Grenville in La Traviata, Bob Becket in HMS Pinafore, and Judge Turpin (cover) in Sweeney Todd. His recent engagements in 2014 include company and role debuts with Opera on the Avalon in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Finger Lakes Opera in New York state as Colline in La Bohème and Zuniga in Carmen, respectively. He also debuted with Rochester Lyric Opera in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial By Jury.

In May 2014 he was privileged to make his Carnegie Hall debut as Myles Brodrib in Howard Hanson’s opera “Merry Mount” with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Michael Christie. He also made a return to Sarasota Opera from January to March to sing the roles of the Emir of Ramla in Verdi’s Jérusalem and Fiorello in il Barbiere di Siviglia.

During his first winter season at Sarasota opera in 2013, he received the prestigious Leo M. Rogers award given each year to a single outstanding apprentice artist. Attendees of the 2013 festival season were able to see Mr. Brown perform scenes from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” as Leporello, Gounod’s “Faust” as Mephistopheles, Verdi’s “Ernani” as Silva, and Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” as Don Alfonso, among others.

In 2012 Mr. Brown joined Opera Saratoga for their educational outreach program “Opera to Go”, where he toured schools throughout upstate New York as Mr. Bigbad in John Davies pastiche opera “Little Red’s most unusual day”. He was then invited back to join the company for their summer festival to sing the roles of Count Ceprano in Rigoletto and as Otis Burrows in William Schuman’s “The Mighty Casey.”
Other operatic roles performed include Don Basilio in il Barbiere di Siviglia, Count Rodolfo in Bellini’s La Sonnambula, Johnnie in Martinu’s Comedy on the Bridge, le Gendarme and le Directeur in Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Ipparco in Cavalli’s L’Egisto, and le Fauteuil in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, among others.

Mr. Brown’s exposure to opera began during his time as principal trumpeter in the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in Ohio, and he began his conservatory training in Cincinnati in trumpet performance. In addition to his skill as an instrumentalist, Mr. Brown also has experience as a professional voiceover actor. He has an exceptional facility with foreign languages, having worked at various times in Italian, French, German, and Russian, and has also studied Latin grammar and Czech diction. His stage combat experience includes working with k. jenny jones in Handel’s Ariodante at CCM. Other interests include music of the middle ages, a repertoire in which Mr. Brown specialized during his 6 years as the head cantor of Old Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Cincinnati, OH, where Mr. Brown specialized in the interpretation of neumatic chant and the motet repertoire of Palestrina.

Mr. Brown is currently based in Interlochen, Michigan, where his wife, soprano Laura Osgood Brown, is on the faculty of the Interlochen Arts Academy.

 

Virginia Opera 2013-2014 Season

We are proud to announce that our 2013-2014 Emerging Artist is Matthew Scollin. It was Morry’s wish that his fund be used to support an Emerging Artist with the Virginia Opera and we’re sure he’d be delighted with our selection. Matthew is a tremendous singing talent and a wonderful actor…just like Morry.

Meet Matthew:

A native of Walled Lake, Michigan, bass-baritone Matthew Scollin has begun his emerging operatic career with prestigious young artist residencies at Santa Fe Opera, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, and Virginia Opera. While a member of Santa Fe Opera’s apprentice program in 2011, he covered Colline (La Bohème) and First Apprentice (Wozzeck) and performed scenes from L’italiana in Algeri and The Ghosts of Versailles. In the summer of 2012, Scollin joined the roster of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program where he sang performances of Man with a Cornet Case in Argento’s Postcard from Morocco as well as selections from Lully’s Alceste in the Merola Grand Finale Concert. As a Seattle Opera young artist during the 2012-13 season, Scollin made his Seattle Opera debut as the 2nd Prisoner in Fidelio and also performed La Rocca in the program’s touring production of Verdi’s Un Giorno di Regno. While at Seattle, he also performed in several public recitals and sang selections from La Traviata, La Forza del Destino, and Rigoletto in the young artists grand finale concert, Viva Verdi. Returning to Santa Fe during the summer of 2013, Scollin covered Antonio (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Jury Foreman / 2nd Prisoner in the world premiere of Theodore Morrison’s Oscar.

For the 2013-14 season, Scollin will join the Emerging Artists program at Virginia Opera. He will sing Speaker / 2nd Armored Man (The Magic Flute), Truffaldino (Ariadne auf Naxos), and Zuniga (Carmen), as well as cover Pistola (Falstaff) and Judge Turpin (Sweeny Todd). Scollin will also join the Portland Symphonic Choir as the bass soloist in their performance of Verdi’s Requiem.

Scollin’s additional operatic repertoire encompasses Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), Don Basilio (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Alidoro (La Cenerentola), Simone (Gianni Schicchi), Frère Laurent (Roméo et Juliette), Elder McLean (Susannah), El Capitàn (Florencia en el Amazonas), and Don Quixote (Man of La Mancha) with Michigan State and Illinois Opera Theaters. Other concert performances have included Bach’s Magnificat, Duraflé’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, and Mozart’s Krönungsmesse and Requiem with the Lansing Symphony, the University of Illinois Symphony, Sinfonia da Camera, and the First Federated Church of Peoria, Illinois.

Scollin holds degrees from Michigan State University (B.M.) and the University of Illinois (M.M.), where he studied with Jerold Siena and Julie and Nathan Gunn.

 

Learn more about The Virginia Opera Emerging Artist Program by clicking here.