ABBA

Tenor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who attended the Academy of Vocal Arts, Millersville University, and earned a spot in the finals at the International Luciano Pavarotti Competition.

His opera credits are vast, but here are some highlights: The Barber of Seville, at the Forum in Philadelphia; Menelas in La belle Helene at The Pennsylvania Opera Theater; Alcindoro in La Boheme at AVA Opera Studio; Don Ramiro in La cenerentola at Camerata Opera Theater; Le Remendado in Carmen with the Opera Company of Philadelphia; and, Monostatos in The Magic Flute and Don Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro at the Walnut Street Theatre. He has even played a mosquito, in an Opera Company of Philadelphia production of Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen.

In 1976, he became a member of The Philadelphia Singers, the chorus-in-residence of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He participated in the Verdi Festival in the summer of 1979, playing a prior in I Lombardi and Gaston in La Traviata.

In March 1988, he celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of The Bucks County Choral Society in a performance of “St. John Passion” by Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1989, he was a guest soloist of the Easton Choral Arts Society in a program entitled “From Broadway to the Met” and was one of the tenors in a fifty-voice choir in a rendering of “Requiem” by Andrew Lloyd Webber at Asbury United Methodist Church and Talbot County Auditorium.

He would be spending a lot of time in church, it seems. He attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in 1998, and became ordained as a priest in 2005 at St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha, Nebraska. On 29^th May 2005, he was a celebrant in his all-important inaugural Mass at Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (A DVD is available.) He has since gone on serve the Holy Rosary Parish of Indianapolis in the capacity of Associate Pastor.

On 24^th October 2009, he was the featured soloist at The Patrons of Sacred Music’s Fall Benefit Dinner at St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago, Illinois. He hasn’t given up on opera completely yet, either. In November 2009, he appeared in the Indianapolis Opera’s mounting of La Boheme as Parpignol, reprising a role he had played twenty-seven years before with the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

The F.S.S.P. that frequently appears after his name in publications stands for Fraternatis Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri, which translates into English as The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

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