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Opera Alumnus Receives Prestigious Fellowship

Christopher Colmenero (MusB ’10, MM ’12) is one of 12 recipients of the 2019 Adler Fellowship through San Francisco Opera.

Selected from participants of the Merola Opera Program, the ten singers and two pianist/apprentice coaches begin their fellowships in January 2019. The multi-year performance-oriented residency offers advanced young artists intensive individual training, coaching and professional seminars, as well as a wide range of performance opportunities.

Since its inception in 1977, the prestigious fellowship has nurtured the development of more than 180 young artists, introducing many budding stars to the international opera stage and launching active careers throughout the world as performers, production artists, arts professionals and educators.

As a member of the 2018 Merola Opera Program, tenor Christopher Colmenero was featured as Luigi in Puccini’s Il Tabarro for the Schwabacher Summer Concert and sang a scene as the title role of Verdi’s Don Carlo for the Merola Grand Finale concert.

He recently returned to Purchase College as a guest artist to sing Judge Danforth in the Purchase Opera spring production of The Crucible. Colmenero was a resident artist with Minnesota Opera during the 2016-17 season, where he performed Benvolio in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Froh in Wagner’s Das Rheingold. He was a 3rd place winner in the 2017 Midwestern Regional Finals and a 2016 Eastern District Finals winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Other awards include the Giulio Gari Foundation, Gerda Lissner Foundation and the 2014 Richard F. Gold Career Grant.

Colmenero holds an Artist Diploma in Voice/Opera from the Mannes College of Music and Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in Voice/Opera from the Purchase College Conservatory of Music.