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Christi McLain
soprano | educator | stage director |
About |
Soprano Christi McLain is celebrated for her invigorating and thoughtful interpretations of contemporary American opera and has performed throughout the United States, Germany, Austria, Ireland, and Luxembourg. During the 2016-2017 season, she made her Hartford Symphony and Chorale debut, singing the role of Nancy Meneely in the new American oratorio, Letter from Italy, 1944 in the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, CT. Dr. McLain also made her Opera Theater of Connecticut debut portraying Juliet in their production of Romeo and Juliet: In Verse and Music. During her time in Connecticut, Dr. McLain premiered the one-act opera Owl Moon with Hartford Opera Theater and was nominated in the category of "Best Actress in a Musical" for the BroadwayWorld Connecticut Awards as Mary Warren in Hartford Opera Theater's production of Robert Ward’s The Crucible. Audiences also saw her as Laetitia in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief and Eva Delvigné in Dan Shore’s An Embarrassing Position with Hartford Opera Theater, and as Marianne in Connecticut Lyric Opera’s production of Der Rosenkavalier. Dr. McLain has also made numerous concert appearances throughout her career, most notably as a soloist with the Phoenix Symphony. In Connecticut, she has performed as the soprano soloist in Schubert’s Mass in G and has made featured appearances with the Torrington Symphony, Farmington Valley Symphony Orchestra, Hartt Opera Theater, and Connecticut Concert Opera, as well as performances of Sara in the new work #trending with In Medias Arts.
As a scholar, Dr. McLain's research has focused primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century works. She received a Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice Performance from Arizona State University in 2013, where her primary research focused on musical settings of texts by Nebraskan author and Pulitzer prizewinner, Willa Cather. Her thesis, Libby Larsen’s “Margaret Songs”: A Musical Portrait of Willa Cather’s Margaret Elliot, was recommended by Donald Simonson in vol. 70, no. 3 of the NATS Journal of Singing. She has since continued her focus on new works, co-presenting Opera of the Absurd: A Survey of Absurdist Opera at the National Opera Association National Conference in New Orleans in January of 2018. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. McLain received a Master of Music in Opera Performance from Arizona State University and a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Along with her performing and scholarly work, Dr. McLain has held teaching positions at the Hartt School of Music-Community Division at the University of Hartford and Choate Rosemary Hall, a prestigious college preparatory school of international renown in Wallingford, Connecticut. During the summer of 2016, she served on the faculty of the International American Classical Music Festival in China. Dr. McLain is a co-founder of In Medias Arts, an artist collaborative composing and premiering contemporary works of devised theatre. In Medias Arts was invited to perform in the Providence Fringe Festival, Charm City Fringe Festival, and The WIP Theater in Chicago to present #trending, a new work marrying visual art, music, theatre, and movement. For her performance as the role of Sara in #trending, Dr. McLain received a nomination in the category of "Best Actress in a Musical" for the 2016 BroadwayWorld Rhode Island Awards. She currently resides in South Carolina, where she serves on the faculty of Coker University and is the acting Governor of South Carolina for the National Opera Association.
Along with her performing and scholarly work, Dr. McLain has held teaching positions at the Hartt School of Music-Community Division at the University of Hartford and Choate Rosemary Hall, a prestigious college preparatory school of international renown in Wallingford, Connecticut. During the summer of 2016, she served on the faculty of the International American Classical Music Festival in China. Dr. McLain is a co-founder of In Medias Arts, an artist collaborative composing and premiering contemporary works of devised theatre. In Medias Arts was invited to perform in the Providence Fringe Festival, Charm City Fringe Festival, and The WIP Theater in Chicago to present #trending, a new work marrying visual art, music, theatre, and movement. For her performance as the role of Sara in #trending, Dr. McLain received a nomination in the category of "Best Actress in a Musical" for the 2016 BroadwayWorld Rhode Island Awards. She currently resides in South Carolina, where she serves on the faculty of Coker University and is the acting Governor of South Carolina for the National Opera Association.