July 26 - August 10, 2008

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Performing at this year's festival...

Robin Fisher

Robin Fisher, lyric coloratura soprano, has performed to critical acclaim in such cities as Paris, Vienna, Prague, Hamburg, Chicago and Dallas. Press reviews remark on her “amazingly precise coloratura, melting diminuendi, splendid high notes and delightful musicality” (Opernwelt) and her “mature timbre and total self-assurance…. an extremely exciting singer-actress” (Westdeutsche Zeitung).

Most recently, Ms. Fisher appeared as Hannah Glawari with West Bay Opera in their 2007 production of The Merry Widow and with Sacramento Opera as Frasquita in their 2007 production of Carmen. With the Sacramento Choral Society, Ms. Fisher appeared on tour in Europe performing works by Haydn and Dvorak in the cities of Munich, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. After her performance in concert at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts (Davis, CA) in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang Symphony, the Sacramento Bee critic found “Soprano soloist Robin Fisher was thrilling…” She has also been heard in Mozart's C-minor Mass and Requiem, Haydn's Creation, Handel's Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem, as well as works by Bach and Schubert with such ensembles as the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra and the Fort Worth Early Music ensemble. She was a featured soloist in the North American premiere of works by Spanish composer Francisco Courcelle with the Orchestra of New Spain in Dallas, and was guest artist at the Sonora Bach Festival as well as Music in the Mountains (Grass Valley, CA).

Ms. Fisher's many recital appearances in both Europe and the United States attest to her love for the art song. She has recorded works for flute and soprano with Laurel Zucker (“The Nightingale Sings”), and a compact disc recording of sacred American art songs in collaboration with pianist Dalton Baldwin was issued in 2003 (“God be in my Heart”). National Public Radio broadcast an interview and concert excerpts in 2002 from her lecture-recital series “Poetry and Music in the American Art Song.” Austrian Radio recorded her world premiere performance of several avant-garde works from the Styrian Fall Festival. Swiss Radio invited Ms. Fisher to record Mozart lieder accompanied by fortepiano for broadcast during a Mozart festival.

Ms. Fisher won both the prestigious Fulbright-Hayes Scholarship and a Rotary Foundation Award to pursue studies in Europe, and received the coveted Artist's Diploma cum laude from the University of Vienna. A native of California, she began her vocal studies at San José State University. Her students have won many competitions and are active performers and teachers throughout the United States. She is in demand both as adjudicator and masterclass teacher. Ms. Fisher is currently Associate Professor of Voice at California State University, Sacramento.