Mezzo Soprano, Jessi Baden “a voice to reckon with” (Toronto Star) is a Washington, DC native.  She has sung with many regional companies including Des Moines Metro Opera, Cabaret Players of Toronto, Players Theatre of Montreal, Thirteenth Street Playhouse, Anchorage Opera, Opera Iowa, Center for Puccini Studies, the Summer Opera Theatre Company as well as in Athens, Greece.  She returns to Choralis, having sung with them in 2003 as the Mezzo Soloist in excerpts from Mahler’s Second Symphony.

 

Equally at home with standard and twenty first century opera, Ms. Baden had the pleasure of debuting the role of Klytemnestra in Andrew Simpson’s Agamemnon and The Furies, of which critics noted, “The performance was dominated by Jessi Baden, vocally powerful and physically imposing in the role of Klytemnestra.” (Washington Post) and, “The strongest performance came from Mezzo Soprano Jessi Baden who teetered at the edge of hysteria as the Ghost of Klytemnestra,” (ionarts.com)  This summer she returned to Des Moines Metro Opera to perform the roles of Alisa in Donizetti’s  Lucia di Lammermoor and the Housekeeper in Britten’s Gloriana, both of which opened to rave reviews.  

 

Next season, Ms. Baden will make her debut with Nevada Opera as Tisbe in La Cenerentola.  This summer, she will be playing Tigrana in the original four-act version of Puccini’s opera Edgar, never before heard outside Italy.

 

Her other ”eloquent” (Washington Post) and “spellbinding” vocal performances (Montreal Gazette)Other roles include Amneris in Aida, Ortrud in Lohengrin, title role in Carmen, Miss Todd in The Old Maid and The Thief, the Mother and Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, Romeo in i Capuletti ed i Montecchi, Siegrune in Die Walkure, Florence Pike in Albert Herring, Larina in Eugene Onegin,  La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica, Frugola in Il Tabbarro, Zita in Gianni Schicchi, Meg Page in Falstaff, Bertha in Il Barbieri di Siviglia, Florence in Albert Herring, Baba in The Medium, Third Lady in The Magic Flute and Nutrice in The Coronation of Poppea.

 

Ms. Baden is also featured on the  concert stage singing the alto solos in Handel’s Messiah, the Second Fairy in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (which she performed at the Kennedy Center), Berlioz’s les Nuits D’Ete (performed at the French Embassy), Brahms’ art songs (performed at the Embassy of Austria), Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (performed at the Embassy of Switzerland) and, most recently, Kurt Weill’s Four Walt Whitman songs at the Corcoran where the Washington Post said of her performance, “Mezzo Jessi Baden has a voice you could eat with a knife and fork, and wielded it masterfully.”