www.sylviamcnair.com

Soprano Sylvia McNair made her San Francisco Opera debut as Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in 1992 and returned to the Company five years later as Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro). She has recently garnered acclaim as an interpreter of Jazz, cabaret, and musical theater repertoire, appearing at cabaret venues such as the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel and the Hotel Carlyle in New York City. Last year she sang Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella at the Ravinia Music Festival in Chicago. A resilient survivor of breast cancer, the soprano has earned two Grammy Awards and made more than seventy recordings ranging from L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Decca Classics), in which she sings the title role, to a collaboration with André Previn on music by Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen (Philips). Among her other diverse opera credits are Tytania and Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare) at the Met; Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress) at the Glyndebourne Festival; and Ilia (Idomeneo) at Royal Opera, Covent Garden. The Mansfield, Ohio native has also performed with major U.S. and international companies and orchestras such as Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Salzburg Festival, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the philharmonic orchestras of Vienna and Berlin. McNair has received honorary doctorates from Westminster College and Indiana University; the Ohio Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Entertainment; and the 2007 Gaudium Award from the Breukelein Institute. McNair joined the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in 2006.