Alicia Purcell
Lecturer in Music, Voice
Critically acclaimed soprano Alicia Purcell has established an outstanding career as a lyric coloratura in concert and opera. As an undergraduate Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance student attending Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN she was the First Place Winner of the Metropolitan Opera District Auditions at age nineteen; winning the top prize three more years consecutively. While studying for her MM in Vocal Performance at Indiana University Bloomington with Metropolitan Opera soprano Margaret Harshaw, she won the James McCracken-Sandra Warfield Young Artist Award. On a Friday morning one January as a first semester doctoral student at IU she received a call from Maestro Lee Schaenen who had worked with her in Graz, Austria three years earlier. He invited her to immediately join Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Center for Young American Artists, learn the role of Lucia in The Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten over the weekend and be on stage in Chicago for the first rehearsal the following Monday.
As an young artist at Lyric Opera Ms. Purcell was chosen by Philip Gossett, PhD, University of Chicago Rossini scholar to demonstrate his newly discovered original manuscript of the aria Caro Nome from Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. Mentioned for that performance in the “Who’s Who” column of Chicago Magazine as a new young opera star to watch, she was chosen to participate in an invitation-only masterclass with Luciano Pavarotti. That year and the next, the 25th Anniversary season of Lyric Opera, Ms. Purcell had the opportunity to sing on stage with Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Sherril Milnes, Alfredo Kraus, Nicholai Ghiaurov and sing under the baton of conductors such as Maestros Georges Pretre and Ricardo Chailly. She performed at La Scala Milan in the world premier of Penderecki’s Paradise Lost and later with Sir Geriant Evans in Lyric’s production of Don Pasquale presented at the Cervantes Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico.
Ms. Purcell made her Chicago Symphony debut on three hours notice singing the Handel aria “Let the bright Seraphim” accompanied by trumpet virtuoso Adolph Herseth. Her professional debut in New York was at Lincoln Center with Music of the Baroque. She was a featured soloist on nationally syndicated radio broadcasts for two seasons produced by the WFMT Classical Radio Network in their series, Arthur C. Andersen Presents Music of the Baroque. She has been a guest artist with internationally-acclaimed orchestras and festivals in the United States including the Chicago Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Grant Park Festival as well as with the Chicago Civic Orchestra, Kansas City, California, Columbia, Piedmont, and Monterey Symphonies. Ms. Purcell has performed with world-renown conductors, singers, musicians and Grammy Award winners Maestros Sir George Solti, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Helmut Rilling, Nicholas McGegan, William McGlaughlin, Michael Morgan and Andrew Parrott, Margaret Hillis, Thomas Peck, with Metropolitan Opera singers Jon Aler, Timothy Noble, David Gordon, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Susan Dunn, Richard Leech and countertenor Jeffery Gall.
Ms. Purcell has been accompanied in recital at the piano by composer Ned Rorem and worked as a soloist with composers Daniel Pinkham and Norman Dello Joio. She has been a guest soloist with professional choral organizations and other music festivals such as The New Oratorio Singers, The New Classic Singers and the Bay City Bach Festival. Ms. Purcell has sung with Chicago Opera Theater, Chicago Chamber Opera and worked with stage directors Frank Galati at Goodman Theater, Dominic Missimi at Chicago Opera Theater, with Covent Garden Director Andy Anderson in Graz Austria, with the Kennedy Center’s National Opera designer Zachary Brown, with Broadway actor Michael McCormick, with Oscar winning Sound Designer David Yewdall and with Cinematographer/Film Director Richard Clabaugh. She has performed vocals for national television advertising product campaigns for Quasar, McDonald's and Hallmark. Ms. Purcell has recently joined the faculty of the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at Indiana University South Bend.
