Allison Charney Biography

Allison Charney, Soprano
PREformances Founder and Curator
 
Soprano Allison Charney's operatic career began in earnest following the national finals of the Metropolitan Opera Competition with her debut at the New York City Opera as Musetta in La Boheme. She went on to sing most of Puccini’s leading soprano roles in opera companies throughout the country, including the title roles in Madama Butterfly, Tosca, and Suor Angelica, Mimi in La Boheme and Liù in Turandot, earning a reputation for her “vocal agility, lush sound, and dramatic portrayals” of the lirico-spinto roles in her wide ranging repertoire. Ms. Charney has experienced enormous success with her Mozart interpretations as well, including both Susanna and the Countess in Le Nozze Di Figaro, both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Pamina in Die Zauberflote and Sandrina in the rarely heard La Finta Giardiniera. She wowed both audiences and critics all over the United States with her tour-de-force portrayals of all three heroines in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman. Her versatility has also led her to sing roles as varied as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Micaëla in Carmen, Nedda in Pagliacci, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and the title roles in Martha, La Traviata, Jenufa, and The Merry Widow.  Ms. Charney’s career has brought her to opera companies across the United States, including the New York City Opera, Atlanta Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Utah Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Memphis, Annapolis Opera, Opera Theater of Connecticut, New Rochelle Opera, Opera Illinois, Opera Delaware, Utah Festival Opera, DiCapo Opera Theater, Tampa Opera, Opera Idaho, Syracuse Opera, Washington Summer Opera Festival, Colorado Opera Festival, and Mississippi Opera. 

Concert highlights have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and as a featured soloist with the esteemed Philadelphia Orchestra. Ms. Charney sang her first performance of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 along with the world premiere of Kim D. Sherman's newly-orchestrated Invocation under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, and returns to the Riverdale Sinfonietta in December of 2014, after her successful turn in Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny to sing in a concert of Bach cantatas. Continuing her commitment to performing music of our times, Ms. Charney sang the premiere of Moshe Knoll’s Psalm 133 with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra in a concert that also featured Kim D. Sherman’s oratorio (composed for Ms. Charney) Songbird and the Eagle in the spring of 2014. In 2014 she also performed in the Rite of Summer Music Festival on Governors Island and made her debut with the Boston Pops under the baton of Alan Gilbert, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. Ms. Charney is featured in the newly-released, first recording of the Pulitzer Prize nominated oratorio Choose Life, by composer Mona Lyn Reese, and can be heard in a CD of American songs with pianist Benjamin Loeb on the DSC Label. Ms. Charney is an active recitalist and master teacher and is the founder and curator of the concert series PREformances with Allison Charney at JCC Manhattan.  After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude with highest honors, in Special Concentrations from Harvard University, she went on to earn two graduate degrees in music from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Charney now lives in New York City with her husband, Adam Epstein and, their two sons, Evan and Oliver.