Laura Brooks Rice
- Email Address: rice@rider.edu
- Phone: (609) 921-7100, ext. 8256
- Office: Erdman Hall 1
- Mailing Address: 101 Walnut Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540
Mezzo-soprano, Laura Brooks Rice has won acclaim on the opera and concert stage for her rich, warm voice, musicality, charm and sensitive acting ability.
Since 1985, Miss Rice has been teaching at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey where she is Professor of Voice. In addition to teaching private voice, Miss Rice teaches courses in opera: "The Singing Actor: Opera" and "Opera Auditions: Techniques and Preparation", and has also been the coordinator of the Opera program. Along with her teaching at Westminster, Miss Rice has a private New York studio. Her private students are currently singing as regular principal artists at The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Sarasota Opera, Dayton Opera, Minneapolis Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Mobile Opera, Maggio Musicale, Opera Omaha, Portland Opera, Knoxville Opera, San Diego Opera, Lake George Opera, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Opera North, Central City, Atlanta Opera and Aix en Provence.
Notable achievements of her private students include the 2004 Richard Tucker award winner, Matthew Polenzani; Kiera Duffy, winner of the Marian Anderson Competition in Philadelphia as well as the New York District Metropolitan Opera competition; Elisa Vilbergsdottir, winner of the Heida Herman Competition as well as second place winner of the 2006 Liederkranz Competition (Wagnerian Division); and Disella Larusdottir, finalist in the 2006 Zachary Competition, Liederkranz Competition, Operalia Competition and winner of the Astral Artistic Services auditions.
As co-founder of the Florence Voice Seminar, the 2007 season will be her seventh summer of teaching in Florence. In addition to her teaching in Florence, she is the co-director of one of Westminster’s newest programs the CoOPERAtive Program, a three-week intensive opera training program. In August 2002 and 2005 she conducted master classes and taught private lessons for the Reykjavik Singing School in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In a diverse repertoire, including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Brahm’s Alto Rhapsody and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Miss Rice has appeared from coast to coast in the United States in concerts and recitals. In recent seasons she has appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on several occasions in works including Handel’s Messiah, which she has also performed with numerous other orchestras nationwide. Miss Rice has performed with the New Jersey Symphony, Bethlehem Bach Festival and Boulder Bach Festival. She made her Mostly Mozart Festival debut singing the role of Apollo in Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth, has been heard in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with San Francisco, Atlanta, San Diego and New Jersey Symphonies with conductors, Kurt Masur, Kurt Sanderling, Robert Shaw and Hugh Wolf.
In the 1992-93 season Miss Rice made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Wowkle in La Fanciulla del West. Following her debut in 1981 with the San Francisco Opera as Grimgerde in Die Walküre she has appeared with that company in several productions, performing such roles as Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, Varvara in Katya Kabanova and Suzuki in Madame Butterfly. She has also performed with the Spoleto Festival (Italy) in Honneger’s King David. A participant in the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, she sang numerous performances as an Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera Center.
In January 1999, along with her accompanist JJ Penna, Miss Rice recorded her widely performed recital “Madwomen in the Attic”, a program of all American music and American women poets. A CD of romantic German and French repertoire was released in spring 2000.
