Meet the quartet who will bring the power, passion and drama of the Requiem to the Brico stage — Soprano Anna Christy, Mezzo-Soprano Abigail Nims, Tenor Matthew Plenk and Bass-Baritone Eric J. McConnell.
Anna Christy begins the 2019–2020 season with a return to Carnegie Hall for the U.S. premiere of Joe Hisaishi’s East Land Symphony, conducted by the composer and accompanied by the American Symphony Orchestra, followed by returns to the Colorado Symphony for Messiah, the Philadelphia Orchestra for L’enfant et les sortilèges, the Seiji Ozawa Music Academy for Adele in Die Fledermaus and Central City Opera for Julie Jordan in Carousel.
On the concert stage, Anna has performed Cunegonde in Candide with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Festival and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. She was also the featured performer in a Candide segment honoring Barbara Cook at the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors concert in Washington, D.C.
Other works Anna has performed in concert include: Carmina Burana with the Baltimore Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony and the National Symphony; Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 at Ravinia; Messiah with Kansas City Symphony; and the operas L’enfant et les sortilèges with the San Francisco Symphony, Le Rossignol with the NHK Symphony, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Ravinia and Fidelio with Boston Baroque. She has also appeared with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Portland Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Anna has performed principal roles at major opera houses across the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opera National de Paris, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, English National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Canadian Opera Company and Teatro alla Scala.
Colorado audiences may have seen Anna, a Denver area resident, in numerous performances with Central City Opera, including the roles of Baby Doe in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Emily Webb in Our Town. She made her Opera Colorado debut as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor and debuted with the Colorado Symphony in In Terra Pax.
Mezzo-soprano Abigail Nims has established herself as a musician of integrity and versatility, garnering praise for her performances of repertoire from the Baroque to contemporary premieres.
Acclaimed for her committed interpretations and tonal beauty in the concert repertoire, Abigail has performed as soloist with renowned orchestras and festivals including the San Francisco Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the São Paulo Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Teatro Municipal, Santiago, Chile, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Boston Baroque, the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park (Florida), the Indianapolis Symphony, the Louisiana Philharmonic and the Masterworks Choir and Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. In Colorado, Abigail and has appeared as soloist with the Colorado Symphony, the Colorado Music Festival, the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, the Boulder Philharmonic, the Colorado MahlerFest, and she is a regular soloist with the Colorado Bach Ensemble.
On the opera stage, Abigail has appeared in leading roles with companies throughout the United States and abroad including Wexford Festival Opera, New York City Opera, Atlanta Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Florentine Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, Opera Omaha, New Jersey Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, the Princeton Festival, Opera Delaware and Opera North.
She joined the voice faculty at the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2013. Her prior teaching positions have included University of California, Berkeley and Yale University.
A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Matthew made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2007–2008 season as the Sailor’s Voice in Tristan und Isolde under the baton of Maestro James Levine, a role he repeated under the baton of Daniel Barenboim. He has since returned to The Met as Arturo, Janek in The Makropolous Case, the Song Seller in Il Tabarro and Marcellus in Hamlet and appeared as Arturo in The Met’s 2011 tour of Japan. Other operatic engagements have included performances with the Los Angeles Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Virginia Opera, Atlanta Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City and the Des Moines Metro Opera.
Matthew has appeared notably in concert performance with University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Houston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (with Gustavo Dudamel), Boston Symphony Orchestra (with James Levine), Philadelphia Orchestra (with Charles Dutoit) and Oratorio Society of New York in Carnegie Hall. His festival performances include the Aspen Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Hartford Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Los Angeles based Musica Angelica Baroque, Connecticut Chamber Orchestra, University of North Carolina Symphony and Yale Philharmonia (conducted by Sir Neville Marriner).
In 2005, Matthew was one of 16 singers invited to work with Naxos Records and Yale University in a collaborative project to record the complete songs of Charles Ives.
He is a Samling Scholar and holds a bachelor’s degree from the Hartt School of Music and a master’s degree from Yale University. His many awards include Grand Finalist in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, First Place winner of the Five Towns Music Competition and Grand Prize winner at the Music Lovers Competition.
Denver native Eric J. McConnell, bass-baritone, is quickly garnering acclaim in the American opera community for his distinctive dramatic voice and his theatrical interpretations of both comic and tragic characters. He began the 2019-2020 season with a return as an Opera Fellow to the Aspen Music Festival, where he performed the Sodbuster in Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up and covered Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro. He then returned as an Artist in Residence at Opera Colorado, where he recently performed as Bartolo in the Student Matinee performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Previous seasons have seen McConnell in professional debuts with Opera Colorado (Figaro/Antonio in Le nozze di Figaro and Dr. Grenvil in La traviata), Central City Opera (Jailer in Tosca, William Jennings Bryan in The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Antonio in Le nozze di Figaro), the Albany Symphony Orchestra (Elisha Fitzgibbon in the orchestral premiere of Evan Mack’s Roscoe, a performance featuring renowned soprano Deborah Voigt), Opera Saratoga (President Prexy in Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock), and the SoBe Arts Institute (Science Officer Curium Black in the world premiere of Carson Kievman’s Intelligent Systems).
He has trained as a young artist with Opera Colorado, Central City Opera, Opera Saratoga, the Aspen Opera Center and Seagle Music Colony. He holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami. He returns to Opera Colorado in Spring 2020, singing Angelotti and study-covering Scarpia in Tosca.