Shelly Art - Nicholas Cotellessa, tenor

AUDIO

BIOGRAPHY

Nicholas Cotellessa, tenor
José Manuel Dapena, guitar

Tenor Nicholas Cotellessa performs as a soloist in opera, oratorio and art song in the U.S. and in Europe. This past 2004-2005 season he made his debut with the Komische Oper in Berlin singing one of the title roles in Hangman’s Desire, a production consisting of four Baroque operas from Carissimi and Monteverdi, for which he received critical acclaim.

Operatic credits include lead roles in several operas of Mozart, Donizetti and Rossini as well as most of the principal tenor roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory. He is a frequent soloist in numerous oratorios, most recently singing the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St. John Passion at St. Alban’s in New York. He has sung regionally as a soloist with Dicapo Opera Theater and New York Cantata Singers, Concert Operetta Theater in Philadelphia, Commonwealth Opera in Western Massachusetts and with Crystal Opera Consortium and Danbury Music Center in Connecticut.

Nicholas also sang for the 2001 and 2002 seasons as a member of the Young Vocal Artists Program of the Caramoor International Music Festival under the direction of Will Crutchfield and for two seasons in opera and oratorio with Boston Baroque and with Handel Haydn Society under the direction of Christopher Hogwood.

He has won several competitions and grants and was a finalist in the 2002 Friedrich Schorr Memorial Prize in Voice and a semi-finalist in the New York Oratorio Society Auditions. An alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center and the Accademia Musicale LaChigiana in Siena, Italy, Nicholas holds degrees in music from Indiana University and Boston University.

REVIEWS

"A thorough musician, endowed with a fine tenor voice and lovely timbre."
Nicolai Gedda

The tenor solos were beautifully sung by Nicholas Cotellessa, who thereby set a high standard for the three other soloists to follow. His full-bodied voice projected throughout the large church with ease.
NEWS-TIMES MUSIC CORRESPONDENT, Connecticut

Nicholas Cotellessa, an excellent singer...
Kulturradio am Morgen, Berlin