Please see my music page at myspace.com/epetillot or my personal webpage at www.classicalsinger.net/elizabethpetillot for more information about me and my work.
Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Pétillot is enjoying a growing reputation as an engaging, impassioned, and intelligent performer of music ranging from opera, operetta, and musical theater to art song, oratorio and early music. Some of her upcoming engagements include three performances of Kurt Weill’s Je ne t’aime pas with the critically acclaimed American Repertory Ensemble (www.americanrepensemble.org), The role of Dinah in Bernstein’s opera Trouble in Tahiti with the Sarah and Ernest Butler Opera Center of Austin, TX, and a tour to Norway and Denmark with the Grammy award nominated chamber choir Conspirare (www.conspirare.org).
Her operatic credits include the roles of Ruth (The Pirates of Penzance) with the Dallas based company The Living Opera, Annio (La Clemenza di Tito) with the Austrian-American Mozart Academy, Nicklausse (Les Contes D’Hoffmann), Lárina (Eugene Onegin) and Madame Sophronie (Della’s Gift) with the University of Texas Butler Opera Center, and Marcellina (Le Nozze di Figaro) with the Rome Festival Opera.
Elizabeth is also dedicated to the performance of art song and enjoys producing annual recitals featuring lesser known repertoire such as her fall 2006 recital Pathways to Shostakovich, a program honoring the centennial celebration of Dmitri Shostakovich which she performed in Austin, TX, at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, TX, and at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX.
Ms. Pétillot is particularly interested in contemporary music especially of Italian and Russian origin. She recently sang in the première performance of Pulitzer Prize nominated composer P. Kellach Waddle’s new work Three mini cantatas written for her and string trio and has premièred many new works for solo voice, chamber ensemble, and vocal ensemble by well-known composers such as Dan Welcher and Paul Crabtree and up-and-coming composers such as Dr. Rob Deemer of Fredonia University. This spring she will be performing The Berio Folk Songs with the Viola by Choice chamber ensemble.
Elizabeth can be seen performing throughout Texas and nationally with organizations such as the Austin Lyric Opera, Conspirare, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Texas Early Music Project, the San Antonio Chamber Choir, the Victoria Bach Festival and the Oregon Bach Festival under the direction of Maestro Helmuth Rilling.
In addition to her performing career, Elizabeth also maintains a private voice studio, teaches voice lessons at a local high school, and teaches Italian language and diction privately. She speaks Italian and French fluently and has studied voice at Indiana University Bloomington where she received her Bachelors degree in vocal performance, and with Prof. Rose Taylor of the University of Texas at Austin where she completed her Masters degree in 2005. In September 2007 she will be returning to the University of Texas at Austin to begin her DMA in vocal performance and will be designing and teaching the undergraduate diction for singers course during that year, the first graduate student at UT to be given this honor.
