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Christopher Herbert
Baritone
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General | | Biography: | Young baritone Christopher Herbert is enjoying an exciting emerging career. During 2006, Mr. Herbert sang the role of Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas with Bronx Opera, the role of Guglielmo in Cosi fan Tutte, also with Bronx Opera, and the roles of the Washington Dandy and Barney in The Ballad of Baby Doe with Central City Opera. In residence at Central City Opera during the summer months, Mr. Herbert served as a Bonfils-Stanton Young Artist, receiving extensive instruction and career experience in diction, combat, and movement. He also gave a featured young artist recital and performed scenes as Papageno in The Magic Flute, as Zurga in The Pearlfishers, and as Guglielmo in Cosi fan Tutte. In addition to his operatic performances, Mr. Herbert joined the Brooklyn Philharmonic as the baritone soloist in a promotional concert tour presenting excerpts from Orff's Carmina Burana and several correlative Medieval songs at the Brooklyn Museum and various other New York locations.
The previous season brought Mr. Herbert to the Tanglewood Music Center where he performed on numerous concerts and recitals. Most notable among them was A Sondheim Celebration with the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart, wherein Mr. Herbert performed scenes as Anthony from Sweeney Todd, Frank from Merrily We Roll Along, and Charles from Evening Primrose at Boston's Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood's Koussevitsky Music Shed. Other appearances at Tanglewood included a performance as Phoebus in Bach's Cantata 201: Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan with Craig Smith and a Tanglewood baroque orchestra, a song master class with James Levine, a fellowship recital of 20th century Finnish music, and an all-Stravinsky vocal chamber music concert, each in Seiji Ozawa Hall. Other 2005 performances included the role of the Puritan Leader in a co-production between Opera Boston and Boston Baroque of Gluck's Alceste, the bass solos from Handel's Messiah with the Fine Arts Chorale of Massachusetts, and several solo performances, including the baritone solos in Faure's Requiem, with the Marble Collegiate Sanctuary Choir in New York.
In addition to his opera and oratorio experience, Mr. Herbert is an accomplished recitalist, and has interpreted art song from a variety of time periods and countries, ranging from Medieval to twenty-first century and from Brazil to Poland. His notable recitals include those at Tanglewood, Central City, Harvard University's Paine Hall, and Yale University's Sudler Hall. In 2006, Mr. Herbert added to his art-song experience as a Young Concert Artists International semifinalist, performing a wide variety of song literature at New York’s 92nd Street Y.
Mr. Herbert was born in New York, NY into a family of artists. His father, an actor and stagehand, worked on Broadway; his mother played piano and guitar. Growing up in Connecticut, Herbert began to study the viola and piano at a young age, and after high school enrolled at Yale University with the intention of becoming a professional violist. Instead, he focused more on his academic studies and on singing, performing with the singing groups the Yale Alley Cats and the Yale Whiffenpoofs, and attending the Aspen Music Festival and School before his senior year. Mr. Herbert also performed the roles of Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Bartley (Riders to the Sea), and Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas) with the Yale College Opera Company and Yale Collegium Musicum. As a double major in Music and in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Mr. Herbert decided to pursue a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University after he completed his undergraduate education. A recipient of the Federal Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, Mr. Herbert studied Arabic in Cairo, and completed his master's thesis on the Italian Occupation of Libya in 2005. All the while during his graduate studies he continued to sing and perform. Mr. Herbert currently resides in New York City and is represented by Hans Spengler Artists Management.
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