Daniel Trevor Bircher, baritone

About the artist

Biography

Daniel Trevor Bircher is an American baritone whose career has carried him from the stages of Milano to concert stages across Texas, Connecticut, and the American Southwest. Recognized by the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions with the Francesco & Hilda Riggio Award, he has sung approximately thirty stage roles in nearly forty productions in four languages and given some fifty masterwork performances as a baritone soloist.

In Italy, Mr. Bircher performed with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi under Giuseppe Grazioli at the Auditorium di Milano. His roles there included Marco in Gianni Schicchi, John Styx in Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers, Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Siméon in Debussy’s L’Enfant prodigue, Le Directeur in Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, and Danilo in Die lustige Witwe. He performed several of these roles with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and with Yale Opera, where he also sang Marcello in La bohème and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, and he appeared as soloist with Orchestra New England under James Sinclair. He made his professional operatic debut with the Abilene Opera Association as Il Bonzo in Madama Butterfly and Dr. Grenvil in La traviata, and his more recent stage work includes Carl-Magnus in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and Arvide in Guys and Dolls. He has worked with stage directors Sir Colin Graham, Marc Verzatt, and Pier Francesco Maestrini, and under the batons of Giuseppe Grazioli, Federico Cortese, and Ransom Wilson.

As a concert soloist, Bircher has sung the title role in Mendelssohn’s Elijah, the baritone solos in Orff’s Carmina Burana, Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs, and the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems, the bass solos in Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, and Dvořák’s Te Deum, and Handel’s Messiah nine times. He has given the U.S. premiere of Terry Johnson’s Song of the Captive, the Connecticut premiere of Lee Hoiby’s Last Letter Home, and the Texas premiere of John Rutter’s Mass of the Children. He sings on Naxos’s landmark complete edition of the songs of Charles Ives (American Classics) alongside Metropolitan Opera artists, and has sung as bass vocalist with the professional chamber ensemble Harmonia Carta. His further honors include finalist placements in the Connecticut Opera Guild Competition and the MacAllister Awards.

Bircher holds a Master of Music in Voice and Opera Performance from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Richard Cross and continued post-graduate study in Opera Performance, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Abilene Christian University, where he studied with Julie Pruett.

He is also an active conductor and stage director, currently serving as Director of Choral & Vocal Studies at Oklahoma Christian University, where he conducts the University Chorale and Chamber Singers and both stage directs and conducts the university’s opera productions, most recently Lehár’s The Merry Widow and his own revised edition of Victor Herbert’s Sweethearts. He formerly served as Conductor and Artistic Director of the Resonance Opera Young Artist Program, and his private students have gone on to New York University, Boston Conservatory, opera young artist programs, and Off-Broadway and regional stages.