About
Angela Scorese is a gifted lyric coloratura known for her exceptional musicality and her ample, evenly rounded tone that sparkles from end to end of her impressive range. She recently received her Bachelor’s Degree in Music from Barnard College of Columbia University and is quickly distinguishing herself in the world of opera, light opera and sacred music. In her tenure with the Barnard-Columbia Chorus, Ms. Scorese was featured as an annual soloist in such works as Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem, Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, Ethel Smyth's Mass in D, Handel's Messiah, and Bach's Magnificat. Her first forays into opera were as a founding cast member of Columbia’s New Opera Workshop (NOW), where she appeared in their repertory scenes as Béatrice in Béatrice et Bénédict, Constance in Dialogues des Carmélites, Mabel in Pirates of Penzance, and Marie in La fille du régiment. In her final year at Columbia she took on two principal roles in full length operas: Mercury (in the soprano octave) in John Eccles’s The Judgment of Paris with NOW and Countess in Thea Musgrave’s The Voice of Ariadne with the Barnard-Columbia Chamber Choir.
Beyond the gates of Columbia, Ms. Scorese has further expanded her opera career through involvement with local troupes, beginning in 2014 when she appeared in Utopia Opera’s concert production of Arthur Sullivan's The Rose of Persia. Since then, she has steadily added to her repertory of Gilbert & Sullivan works as a member of the Ridgewood Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company in NJ, appearing as Phyllis in their 2017 production of Iolanthe. She went on to play Yum-Yum in The Mikado and the title role in Princess Ida in their 2018 season (her second time around with the latter work, having sung the role of Lady Psyche with the New York Times-featured Westchester Gilbert & Sullivan Group in 2017). Last spring she joined newly-founded Spooky Goose Opera Company as a performer in their Quarantine Concert Series, and is looking forward to taking on exciting new roles in their upcoming productions of newly-composed works. Most recently, Ms. Scorese was honored to be a semifinalist in Classical Singer's Vocal Competition (Classical Emerging Professional Division) in both 2020 and 2021, as well as a selected participant in New Jersey Vocal Arts Collaborative's Virtual Singing Summit and Virtual Opera Gala under the direction of Dr. Julia Rolwing. Last summer she turned to the more serious side of opera with her most demanding role yet: Queen of the Night in Spooky Goose Opera's production of Die Zauberflöte, which made history as the world's first live Zoom performance of an opera written for the stage. Next spring she returns to Mozart's work in the role of Papagena (covering Queen of the Night), this time in NJ Vocal Arts Collaborative's June 2022 semi-staged production.
Ms. Scorese maintains a steady career in sacred music, principally at The Oratory Church of St. Boniface in Brooklyn, NY and St. Francis Church in Hoboken, NJ. She worked for 5 years at St. Gabriel's Church in Saddle River, NJ as the assistant director/conductor of their children’s choir and soprano section leader for their adult choir, in addition to being featured as a cantor and soloist there for the last ten years. In 2015, she took her sacred choral talents abroad to Spain where she sang with the Cathedral Choir at the Mesquita-Catedral de Córdoba (as well as with the Coro Averroes of the Universidad de Córdoba, where she was also featured as a soloist). Through this extensive experience in sacred music, she has become greatly familiar with chant notation (both modern and medieval) and modal scales, and has developed an incredible proficiency in sight singing bolstered by her years of secular choir participation.
