Biography

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Carol Ann Manzi is one of the most soulful sopranos heard today. Opera News has called her voice “secure, warm and multifaceted,” while nearly every publication has raved about her “gorgeous and crystalline pianissimo singing,” her expressivity, long legato lines, and highly believable interpretations.

In 2011, for the Santa Barbara Music Club, she sang her first Frauenliebe und -Leben cycle (Schumann) with pianist Betty Oberacker. She returns with Ms. Oberacker to sing Debussy's lush cycle, Proses lyriques, in January 2012. She debuted with the Santa Barbara Master Chorale as the mezzo-soprano soloist in Theodorakis's dramatic and revolutionary work in Spanish, Canto General—settings of poems of Pablo Neruda, and returned as soloist for the Magnificats and Glorias of Vivaldi and Buxtehude. She joins them again as guest artist for a Holiday Gala Concert in December 2011. In 2010, she returned to Opera San Luis Obispo as Mimi (La Bohème) after triumphant performances as Cio Cio San in Madama Butterfly.

She was a three-time soloist for the prestigious Jefferson-Jackson National Democratic fund-raisers in Southern California. In Dallas, she debuted with Voices of Change and Voces Intimae performing a variety of art song and vocal chamber music at the Fort Worth Museum of Contemporary Art, under the direction of Maestro Joseph Illick. Also in Dallas, she debuted with the Highlander Concert Series for Aaron Copland's In the Beginning and Handel's Messiah (her first as a mezzo soloist).

Recent opera engagements include her return to Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, as Maria in Mascagni's Guglielmo Ratcliff, opposite MET tenor Lando Bartolini, following a triumphant Vivetta (L'Arlesiana). She has sung Mimi (La Bohème) for the Greensboro, Eugene, Sarasota, Carolina and Pacific Repertory Opera Companies. Her five seasons with the Sarasota Opera have included Magda (La Rondine), Vivetta (L'Arlesiana), Leila (The Pearl Fishers) and Fiora (L’Amore dei Tre Re). Her Cio Cio San (Madama Butterfly) has been heard at Abiline Opera and Opera San Luis Obispo. Her Musetta (La Bohème) has been heard at the Connecticut Opera and The Yale Opera. She has been hailed as a “supple voiced and exquisite” Violetta (La Traviata) for Opera Theatre of Connecticut, Opera Santa Barbara and Eugene Opera.

Other roles to this versatile soprano’s credit have included Fiordiligi (Così Fan Tutte), Nedda (I Pagliacci), Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus), Gilda (Rigoletto), Cendrillon and Tosca for the Shubert Opera, The Conneticut Opera and The Banff Festival.

In concert Miss Manzi has appeared with The Toledo Opera, Opera Maine, The Tanglewood, Banff and Chautauqua Festivals, singing a wide range of repertoire that extends from the classical song to Sondheim. Her many concert and oratorio credits include The Hartford Symphony, The Eugene Symphony, The Rogue Symphony, The Litchfield, Meriden and New Haven Symphonies, performing The Messiah, Elijah, Verdi's Requiem, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart's Coronation Mass, and Mendelsssohn’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, in addition to opera, operetta and musical theater galas in concert halls worldwide. Manzi has garnered top awards, prizes, and scholarships from the Yale Opera, the McAllister Foundation, Rosa Ponselle and Jenny Lind Competition, the Sarasota, Miami, and Connecticut Opera Companies, UNICO International and the National Federation of Music Clubs.

She is the dedicatee of Reversals (published in 2011), a cycle of songs for voice and classic guitar by Thomas Heck to lyrics by poet and peace activist David Krieger. Carol Ann Manzi's recordings include SONGS OF COMFORT AND COURAGE, to benefit a variety of cancer causes, LOOK TO THE RAINBOW, and more recently THE MOST BELOVED SONGS OF CHRISTMAS, with classical guitarist Thomas Heck.

The Yale graduate has continued her worldwide public speaking and concerts for breast cancer and other causes, with engagements in Austria, the Czech Republic, Dallas, Canada, Oregon, California, Washington D.C., and other parts of the U.S.

Please click here for a sampling of Ms. Manzi's professional reviews. A printer-friendlly Curriculum vitae is likewise available.