Grove Music Festival

Singers From Lyric Opera perform here Friday May 17, 2010

Chicago Lyric Opera members, from left, William Billingham, Angela Mannino and Paul Corona.

The 2010 Grove Music Festival chamber music series continues Friday with a vocal program by members of the Chicago Lyric Opera.

“Opera Arias, Art Songs and Broadway” starts at 8 p.m. May 21 at Chapel Lane Presbyterian Church, 5501 Jefferson Ave., Midland. Tickets are $10 at the door, $5 for students.

The concert is the second in the 13th annual Grove Music Festival spring chamber series. About 60 people turned out Sunday afternoon to hear a recital by the American Romanian Festival Quartet, a string quartet from the Detroit area.

Performers in the Friday evening concert are Angela Mannino, soprano; Paul Corona, baritone; and William Billingham, piano.

Mannino comes to the Grove Festival fresh from her Metropolitan Opera debut as the 15-year-old girl in Alban Berg’s Lulu, a role she performed earlier at Lyric. Also at Lyric she has had roles in “Manon,” “Tosca,” “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “The Marriage of Figaro,” and “The Abduction From the Seraglio.”

Corona was a 2006 Grand Prize Winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. His roles at Lyric include Dr. Grenvil in “La Traviata,” Pistol in “Falstaff,” the Bonze in “Madama Butterfly” and Sciarrone in “Tosca.” He has also performed with Chicago Opera Theater and made his Ravinia debut last summer in Kurt Weill’s “Mahagonny Songspiel” and as Marullo in “Rigoletto.”

Billingham has served as an assistant conductor at Lyric since 1995, working with many of the world’s leading opera singers and conductors. Also active as a recital accompanist and chamber musician, he holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, the Peabody Conservatory, and the University of Southern California. He started his opera career in Germany in the opera houses of Heidelberg and Düsseldorf.

The program includes arias by Mozart and Donizetti, art songs by Schubert, Debussy, Poulenc, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Ralph Vaughn Williams and others, and several songs from Broadway.