A NIGHT FOR ROMANCE

Tiffany Townsend, soprano
Cedric Berry, bass-baritone

Borodin: Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
Gershwin: Summertime, I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’, and Bess, You is My Woman Now (from Porgy and Bess)
Mendelssohn: Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy

Tiffany Townsend has been praised for her “powerhouse soprano and expressive presence” (The Wall Street Journal) and “rich voice and interpretive talent” (Bachtrack). She was designated as a Resident Artist at Seattle Opera for the 2024-2025 season. She made her role debut as America Robinson in Jubilee and covered Tosca and Nedda in Pagliacci at Seattle Opera during that season. Ms. Townsend is the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation. She has performed with LA Opera, Wolf Trap Opera & Opera Philadelphia. She also has been in concert with the New Jersey Symphony, the Bakersfield Symphony, Artosphere Festival, the Missouri Symphony, Tacoma Symphony and The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Tiffany Townsend holds a Professional Studies Certificate in Opera from Curtis Institute of Music, a Master of Music from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Millsaps College.

Cedric Berry is making a triumphant return to our stage. He wields “a bass-baritone of considerable power and agility” (The Chicago Tribune), projecting “machismo and a voice of fabulous mettle to the theatre’s last row....tossing off difficult passagework and deploying dazzling thunderbolts of sound at the top of the range” (Voix des Arts). Roles include the title role in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust, Lepporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Shaunard in Puccini’s La Boheme. Companies include Los Angeles Opera, The Industry Opera, Long Beach Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival of Finnland, Banlieurs Bleues Festival of France and the Ravinia Music Festival, to name a few. He has appeared with Pacific Symphony, Arizona Symphony, Santa Fe Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Pasadena Pops Orchestra, California Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Telemann Chamber Orchestra of Japan. He also won first place in the Metropolitan Opera Western Region Competition. He received his music diploma from Interlochen Arts Academy and both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Southern California.