Properly introducing Brian Mextorf; Competing in Met SE Regional Finals

Brian Mextorf

We briefly introduced Brian Mextorf back in September 2013, when he was workshopping composer Clint Borzoni's Antinuous and Hadrian with Operamission in New York City. He recently was named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (North Carolina District), so we thought this was a good time to properly reintroduce him to readers.

Mextrof hails from Williamsport, Pennsylvania and studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (B.M.) and the Westminster Choir College (M.M.). This season he'll be an Emerging Artist with Virginia Opera for the 2014-15 season. In 2012, he was a member of the Gerdine Young Artist with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis where he performed three roles in the North American premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.

A favorite of Operamission, in addition to Borzoni's work, he has appeared as Lesbo in their production of Handel’s Agrippina and Edward Ficklin’s Flash of Recognition. He sang Judas in the Philadelphia Orchestra's performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin in a cast that included fellow barihunks Luca Pisaroni and Andrew Foster-Williams.

Christian Zaremba and Alexander Elliott to compete in Met Semi-Finals

He will also be making his debut at Opera Saratoga as Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas. His Dido will be Jennifer Johnson Cano and the performance will be led by the brilliant conductor Nicole Paiement. Performances run from July 6-21 and tickets are available online.

Mextorft will compete in the Metropolitan Opera's Southeast Regional Finals on February 15, 2015. We'll be watching those closely, as a number of other singers who have appeared on this site will be competing in the regionals, including Vasil Garvanliev, Robert Balonek, Ricardo Rivera, Cairan Ryan, Alexander Elliott, Colin Ramsey, Steven Eddy, Christian Zaremba, Andrew Lovato and Chris Carr.       

Also competing are a number of singers who we've not featured yet, but will profile this week. They include Jonathan Harris, Phillip Gay, Andrew Bogard, Zachary Read, Brian Vu, Ben Taylor, Nathan Milholin, Christopher Besch and Christian Pursell.