Porgy and Bess

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Theatre). She can be seen and heard as the
Operatic Diva in Tyler Perry’s feature film For
Colored Girls. A former San Francisco Opera
Adler Fellow, the Philadelphia native is a past
winner of the George London Award and a
prize winner in ten major competitions, including
the Rosa Ponselle competition, of which she was
the youngest winner at age 18.
HLENGIWE
MKHWANAZI (Clara)
Lyric Opera debut
A first-year member of
Lyric’s Patrick G. and Shirley
W. Ryan Opera Center,
the soprano earned critical
acclaim for her Chicago
debut in May 2014: the leading role of Thérèse
in Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias, which she
performed with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago
at Symphony Center. A native of KawZulu-
Natal, Mkhwanazi earned her diploma in opera
in 2010 and her postgraduate diploma in music
performance in 2012, both from the South
African College of Music at the University
of Cape Town. Among her leading roles in
Cape Town have been Fiordiligi/Così fan tutte,
Konstanze/Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and
Antonia/Les contes d’Hoffmann, all at Cape
Town Opera; and Stravinsky’s Anne Trulove/
The Rake’s Progress and Rossini’s Madama
Cortese/Il viaggio a Reims at the Baxter Theater.
In America she has been heard as Adina/
L’elisir d’amore at Virginia’s Barter Theatre and
Susanna/Le nozze di Figaro at Brown University.
The soprano’s successes in competitions
include second overall prize, media jury prize,
and audience prize in one of the world’s most
distinguished voice competitions, Vienna’s
Hans Gabor Belvedere International Singing
Competition (2012). Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi is
sponsored by Richard P. and Susan Kiphart and
Drs. Funmi and Sola Olopade.
GWENDOLYN
BROWN (Maria)
Previously at Lyric Opera:
Old Woman/A View from
the Bridge (world premiere,
2000-01).
The contralto, a former
member of the Lyric Opera
Chorus and an alumna of the Ryan Opera
Center, returns to Lyric this season as Maria/
Porgy and Bess,a portrayal previously acclaimed
at the Seattle Opera, Boston Symphony
Orchestra (both during the regular season
and at Tanglewood), and in Washington,
New Orleans, and in Germany, Holland, and
Belgium. Among other major credits are Azalia/
William Grant Still’s Troubled Island (South
Shore Opera Company), Marie Laveau/
Anne LeBaron’s Crescent City (Los Angeles’s
new opera company, The Industry), Fricka/
Das Rheingold (Des Moines Metro Opera),
Queenie/Show Boat (Washington National
Opera), and “Beyond the Score: Dvořák’s
New World Symphony” (Chicago Symphony
Orchestra). This season’s highlights include
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (Madison
Symphony Orchestra). Other orchestral
appearances have included Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 9 and Hale Smith’s Four Spirituals
with the Chicago Sinfonietta, and three seasons
at Oregon’s Yachats Music Festival. Brown
has given numerous recitals, including for
Florida’s American Spirituals Negro Spiritual
Scholarship Foundation, the Opera Memphis
Negro Spiritual Scholarship Foundation, the
Fisk University Arts Festival, and the Four
Seasons Concert Series in San Francisco. She
is a former regional winner (Memphis) and
regional finalist (Chicago) with the Metropolitan
Opera National Council Auditions.
NORMAN GARRETT
(Jake)
Lyric Opera debut
The baritone, a native of
Lubbock, Texas, is a recent
alumnus of the Domingo-
Cafritz Young Artist
Program at Washington
National Opera. He has been seen at WNO
as Papageno/The Magic Flute, Masetto/Don
Giovanni (Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist
Performance), the Father/Hansel and Gretel,
and in Tristan und Isolde , Jake Heggie’s Moby
Dick, Jeanine Tesori’s The Lion, the Unicorn
and Me (world premiere), and most recently in
Daniel Catán’s Florencia in the Amazon earlier
this season. Garrett returned to Wolf Trap
Opera in 2014 as Escamillo/Carmen and Son
Ami/Milhaud’sLe pauvre matelot. He previously
appeared there as Ford/Falstaff and Baron
Trombonok/Il viaggio a Reims. The baritone
has also been heard at Opera Santa Barbara
(Amonasro/Aida), Kentucky Opera, Cincinnati
Opera, and Philadelphia’s Center City Opera
Theater. Garrett is a former resident artist of
the Academy of Vocal Arts and a winner of the
2014 George London Foundation Competition.
In the past three years, he has garnered top
prizes in more than a dozen international vocal
competitions, among them those of the Gerda
Lissner Foundation, the William Matheus
Sullivan Foundation, and the Licia Albanese-
Puccini Foundation.
BERNARD HOLCOMB
(Robbins)
Previously at Lyric Opera:
Eight roles since 2011-12,
most recently Parpignol/
La bohème, Notary/Don
Pasquale, Captain/Simon
Boccanegra (all 2012-13).
In addition to his previous roles in Lyric’s
mainstage season, the tenor’s tenure with
the company’s Ryan Opera Center included
appearing with Renée Fleming and Sir Patrick
Stewart in The Second City Guide to the
Opera. Earlier this year Holcomb debuted
at Opera in the Heights (Houston) as the
Duke/Rigoletto and Chicago Opera Theater
as Harlequin/Ulmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis
and Donkeyman/Orff’s The Clever One. In
Chicago the Detroit native has also been heard
at Symphony Center (Rodolfo/La bohème, Act
Four, with the Civic Orchestra), and with the
Rush Hour Concert series. In 2009 and 2010,
he was featured at the Pine Mountain Music
Festival (Il matrimonio segreto, La traviata). He
made his professional debut in 2006 as the
Crab Man/Porgy and Bess with Michigan Opera
Theatre. He later participated in an international
tour of Gershwin’s opera, appearing in Russia,
Poland, Greece, Latvia, Estonia and Germany.
Holcomb is an alumnus of the University of
Michigan-Ann Arbor, the Eastman School of
Music, and the Sarasota Opera young-artist
program.
CHASE TAYLOR
(Mingo)
Lyric Opera debut
The tenor, who portrayed
Mingo in Syracuse Opera’s
Porgy and Bess production
earlier this year, has
performed a wide variety
of repertoire nationwide. His roles have ranged
in style from Florestan/Fidelio (Skylight Music
Theatre) and Bacchus/Ariadne auf Naxos (IVAI-
Tel Aviv, CCM Opera, Cleveland Institute
of Music) to Joe/Gershwin’s Blue Monday
(Harlem Opera Theater/On Site Opera).
Among the other companies with whom he has
appeared are Gotham Chamber Opera, the
Glimmerglass Festival, Opera on the James,
and Empire Opera. Taylor is an alumnus of the
Mannes College of Music, the University of