Allison Charney

Soprano

 

Soprano Allison Charney’s operatic career began in earnest following the national finals of the Metropolitan Opera Competition with her debut at the New York City Opera as Musetta in La Bohème. She has gone on to sing most of Puccini’s leading soprano roles in opera companies throughout the country, including the title roles in Madama Butterfly, Tosca and Suor Angelica, Mimi in La Bohème and Liù in Turandot, earning a reputation for her “vocal agility, lush sound and dramatic

portrayals” of the lirico-spinto roles in her wide-ranging repertoire.

 

Ms. Charney has experienced enormous success with her Mozart interpretations as well, including both Susanna and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Sandrina in the rarely heard La Finta Giardiniera. She wowed audience and critics all over the United States with her tour-de-force portrayals of all three heroines in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. Her versatility has also led her to sing roles as varied as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Micaëla in Carmen, Nedda in Pagliacci, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana and the title roles in Martha, La Traviata, Jenufa and The Merry Widow.

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Ms. Charney’s career has brought her to opera companies across the United States, including the New York City Opera, Atlanta Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Utah Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Memphis, Annapolis Opera, Opera Theater of Connecticut, New Rochelle Opera, Opera Illinois, OperaDelaware, Utah Festival Opera, DiCapo OperaTheater, Tampa Opera, Opera Idaho, Syracuse Opera, Washington Summer Opera Festival, Colorado Opera Festival and Mississippi Opera. Concert highlights have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, as a featured soloist with the esteemed Philadelphia Orchestra and with the Boston Pops under the baton of Alan Gilbert.

 

Continuing her commitment to performing music of our times, Ms. Charney recently premiered Moshe Knoll’s Psalm 133 with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Barbara Day Turner, in a concert that also featured Kim D. Sherman’s oratorio (composed for Ms. Charney) Songbird and the Eagle.

 

Upcoming performances will include further premieres of pieces by Michael Ching, Ms. Sherman and Mr. Knoll, whose Psalm 133 she recently sang in concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where she was also the soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Ms. Charney is scheduled to make her Carnegie Hall debut in the spring of 2022 as a featured soloist in the new composite song cycle, Forgotten Voices. Ms. Charney will be featured in the first recording of Forgotten Voices and can also be heard on the debut recording of the Pulitzer Prize nominated oratorio Choose Life, and Allison and Ben: For the Record – a compilation of American songs released on the DSC Label.

 

Ms. Charney is a founding member of the ARK trio, who is scheduled to release their first recording – Love Resounding -in 2022, recorded during their residency at Macalester College. She is also co-creator, with pianist Donna Weng Friedman, of Her/Music; Her/Story, a series launched at Steinway Hall in 2019 and now featured in a four-part radio series on WQXR.  Ms. Charney is an active recitalist and master teacher and is the artistic and executive director of the long-running concert series, PREFORMANCES WITH ALLISON CHARNEY most recently presented live at Merkin Hall in New York City. During the pandemic, Charney pivoted to the virtual stage with her concert and conversation series: SEASON OF HOPE presented by the historic Town Hall. Her collaboration with Town Hall continues with – OPERA AT HOME - a new series for the virtual stage, featuring her reimagined and abridged versions of classic operas.

 

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude with highest honors, in Special Concentrations from Harvard University, she went on to earn two graduate degrees in music from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Charney now lives in New York with her husband and their two sons.