Biography

Bass-baritone PAUL HOUGHTALING has enjoyed success in a variety of stage roles, as well as concert repertoire ranging from works of Bach and Handel to Cage and Crumb, and has delighted audiences across the United States and Europe with his innate theatricality, commanding presence, and distinctive style. Career highlights include European tours as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte with Teatro Lirico d'Europa ("...an extraordinary Papageno of comic sensitivity, naivete and tenderness, served by a superb voice and a remarkable physical agility." Salon de Provence); a debut with the Bard Music Festival and the American Symphony Orchestra in Haydn’s L’Infedeltá Delusa ("...revealed a striking and flexible baritone."  Opera News); Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King with ALEA III in Boston ("...singing forcefully, in eerie falsetto highs and chesty baritonal lows … the Davies sent you home stunned."  The Boston Globe); Mozart’s Requiem and Bach’s Magnificat with St. Cecilia Chorus at Carnegie Hall; works of Bach with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Bach Cantatas in Context” Series, American Classical Orchestra, Amor Artis Baroque Orchestra, and others; United States tours with the Waverly Consort, including Kennedy Center appearances; “Opera Buffa: Comedy On Stage” on Lincoln Center’s “Meet the Artists” series; and his acclaimed Gilbert & Sullivan interpretations with the Anchorage, Cedar Rapids, Knoxville, Lake George, Nashville and Central City Operas, among other opera companies and orchestras throughout the United States. Houghtaling is a frequent studio artist with Philip Glass and Looking Glass Studios and can be heard as a featured vocalist on Glass's soundtrack to Reggio's film Naqoyqatsi on the SONY label, and as the Laughing Sun and the Ogre in the Glass/Beni Montresor collaboration, The Witches of Venice, recorded for Euphorbia. He frequently toured and soloed with Alice Parker and Melodious Accord in a variety of American repertoire and performed with that ensemble in a still-popular 1992 episode of Prairie Home Companion. Last year included Beethoven’s Mass in C and Mozart’s “Coronation” Mass with St. Cecilia, recitals for the Des Moines Symphony Academy and the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre in Iowa, and the Beethoven again at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts.  The current season brings recital appearances in Birmingham (Cathedral Church of the Advent) and Mobile (Mobile Music Teachers Association at University of Mobile), and performances at the national conventions of the College Music Society in Portland, Oregon (music of Virgil Thomson), and the National Opera Association in Atlanta (the UA Opera Theatre was a finalist in the national collegiate opera scenes competition). In the fall of 2010, he will debut with Mobile Opera as both the stage director and Maximilian in Candide, and will return to Carnegie Hall with the St. Cecilia Chorus as soloist in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

Currently the Director of Opera Theatre at the University of Alabama and Artistic Director of the Druid City Opera Workshop, additional directing credits include Così fan tutte and The Gondoliers for Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre; Telemann’s Der Schulmeister for Anchorage Opera’s “Second Stage” Series and the Long Island Baroque Ensemble; scenes programs for Caldwell College in New Jersey, and University of Alabama; Gilbert & Sullivan reviews and “Best of Broadway” concerts for several orchestras, choruses, and universities throughout the U.S.; Shall We Dance for the Abilene Philharmonic;  Café d’amour for Alaska Dance Theater; and Argento’s Postcard From Morocco for Chamber Opera of Boston.  Recent seasons at Alabama included The Merry Widow, Pagliacci, Suor Angelica, Hoiby’s Bon Appetit! and Heggie’s At the Statue of Venus. The 2009-2010 season includes Masque: Music that Haunts and The Gondoliers.

Recent engagements include music of Bach, Brahms, Ives, Isaac and Vaughan Williams as a faculty artist at the University of Alabama, Sir Joseph in H.M.S. Pinafore with Nashville Opera, and a return to Carnegie Hall with David Randolph and the St. Cecilia Chorus as soloist in Bach's Christmas Oratorio. The 2006-2007 season included Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore with Anchorage Opera, an all-German program with St. Cecilia,  and a return to the Harmony Hall Regional Center in Maryland in a new program of classic songs from classic movies, and to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts for Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem. The 2005-2006 season included Handel's Judas Maccabeus with Amor Artis Baroque Orchestra under Johannes Somary, a return to Abilene Opera as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and to Holy Cross as soloist in Mozart's Coronation Mass, a recital of American song at the Harmony Hall Regional Center, and Bach arias with the American Classical Orchestra under Thomas Crawford.

In 2004-2005, Mr. Houghtaling sang  Ko-Ko in The Mikado in his debut with the Lake George Opera Festival at Saratoga Springs, New York, ("It was a total, integrated performance -- part Harold Lloyd, part patter-singer extraordinaire, all scintillating." The Record, Troy, NY), the Sacristan in Tosca with New York's Prism Opera Showcase, the Major General in The Pirates of Penzance with Florida's Gulf Coast Symphony, Bach's B-Minor Mass with Miami Bach Society, and the Fauré Requiem with Manhattan Concert Productions at Carnegie Hall. In the spring of 2005,The New York Times put his staged Dichterliebe in the same favorable light as similar projects by Andreas Scholl and Simon Keenlyside by saying, "... a growing number of [singers] -- including Simon Keenlyside...and Paul Houghtaling, in appropriately madcap stagings of Schumann cycles, have been livening up their acts."

Other notable opera and operetta engagements include highly lauded performances with the Central City Opera as the comic lead in Friml’s Rose-Marie ("...manages to make his small frame look ludicrous in any costume -- not a problem, but an asset for this show stealer." Rocky Mountain News), the title role in Don Pasquale for Tacoma Opera, the Major General with Knoxville ("...his tour-de-force performance grabbed the audience from the opening note."  Knoxville News-Sentinel) and the Anchorage and Central City Operas and Gilbert & Sullivan pops concerts with the Johnstown Symphony, and the Abilene and Erie Philharmonics.  He has also appeared with the Boston Lyric, Baltimore, Natchez, Des Moines, Long Beach Civic Light, and The Santa Fe Operas, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Opera East Texas and L’Opera Francais de New York under Yves Abel, among others. Mr. Houghtaling appeared with the Alaska Dance Theater in Café d'Amour , a new dance-theater work conceived by Mr. Houghtaling and choreographed by Noelle Partusch to art songs by Duparc, Bizet, Fauré, Ibert and Chausson, and with the Abilene Philharmonic under Shinik Hahm in The Magic of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Earning considerable attention for his work in contemporary music, especially for his performances of Davies’ Eight  Songs for a Mad King, Mr. Houghtaling has performed with Gunther Schuller, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, and ALEA III, both in the U.S. and on the Kalamata and Iraklion Festivals in Greece in new theater works for Greek National Television.  In 1994, he appeared with the American Composers Orchestra on its Sonidos de las Americas Festival in Weill Hall at Carnegie, and in 1996 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic on its Virgil Thomson Centenary.  Other notable projects include John Cage's Apartment House 1776 during the composer's 1988 Norton Lectures at Harvard, George Crumb's Songs, Drones & Refrains of Death with ALEA III, and Davies' Le Jongleur de Notre Dame ("Paul Houghtaling has personality and a splendid voice." The Boston Globe) with the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble in Boston.  In addition to works by Philip Glass, Mr. Houghtaling has created roles in numerous new theater and opera works including Lee Hoiby’s The Tempest with Des Moines Metro Opera and the title role in William Harper's El Greco for the Off-Broadway Intar Theater.  He can also be heard as soloist on two recordings for New World Records' Recorded Anthology of American Music series: cantatas of Robert Beaser on Divine Grandeur, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s "Romancero Gitano" on The Mask, both with New York Concert Singers under Judith Clurman.

Mr. Houghtaling holds degrees from Holy Cross College, Worcester, MA (B.A.), The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston (B.M.) and Hunter College in New York City (M.A.). He is nearing the completion of the D.M.A. at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  In the fall of 2007, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama as Assistant Professor of Voice and Director of Opera Theatre.  He has also served on the faculties of Hunter College and Highbridge Voices in New York, and has given master classes at Shorter College, Rome, Georgia, Texas A&M University-Commerce, the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and the Classical Singer National Convention.

This page was updated on 06/16/10 07:59 PM  

Ko-Ko

The Major General

Hard-Boiled Herman

Njegus

Somnus

Maximillian

Papageno

In Concert

Eight Songs for a Mad King

Cafe d'Amour