American bass, Matthew Curran, has garnered attention internationally with his broad range of repertoire and strong physical presence. Critics have described him as having “the voice of a poet,” and a sound “that is confident and comes with a twinkle.”
Mr. Curran has focused on the core bass repertoire such as Sarastro, Colline, Figaro, Frère Laurent, Sparafucile and Gremin, while actively pursuing contemporary and lesser-known works such as Britten’s Gloriana, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Rape of Lucretia, Stephen Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon, Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow, Lowell Lieberman’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Tarik O’Regan’s Heart of Darkness, and Christopher Berg’s Cymbeline. He has also been a regular singer with American Opera Projects in numerous works in development as well as being a resident singer for their Composer and the Voice workshop for three seasons. He has performed with Atlanta Opera, Seattle Opera, Zürich Opera, Opera New Jersey, New Orleans Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Central City Opera, Skagit Opera, Washington East Opera, Center City Opera Theater, Opera Company of Brooklyn, Castleton Festival, American Symphony Orchestra, and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra among others.
Most recently he joined New York City Opera to cover the role of Inspector Watts in Stephen Schwartz’s new opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon, also singing in two new works as part of their Vox Opera Lab Concerts. He also sang the Brahms Requiem with Symphony Silicon Valley. Prior to that, his performance in Atlanta Opera’s La Bohème received the following nod. “Bass Matthew Curran, the philosopher Colline, solidly offered a farewell to his beloved coat.” Other recent appearances include La Chef de la Flotte in Bérénice at Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra, Sarastro as a guest artist with Queens College Opera, Penvald in Fervaal by Vincent D’Indy with the American Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, Mat of the Mint in The Beggar’s Opera conducted by Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival and as a soloist in the Mendelssohn St. Paul oratorio with the American Symphony Orchestra at the Bard Festival. He is also thrilled with the release on the Naxos label of his performance as Edwin Cheney in Shining Brow, by Daron Hagen, an opera on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. The recording is from a live concert performance with the Buffalo Philharmonic.
A cum laude graduate of the Loyola University New Orleans School of Music, he received his Master’s degree at the prestigious Indiana University School of Music, which led him to being immediately accepted into the Seattle Opera’s young artist program where he sang Colline in La Bohème, Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola and Zaretsky in Eugene Onegin on the main stage. Following Seattle he furthered his training at the International Opera Studio in Zurich singing Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte für Kinder, Macrobio in Rossini’s La Pietra del Paragone, and Max Hammer in Der Musikfeind along with numerous smaller roles on the Main stage along side many of the world’s top name singers.
Updated July 19, 2011