Lisa Hopkins
Encyclopedia
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
singer and actress from Simi Valley, California
Simi Valley, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Simi Valley had a population of 124,237. The population density was 2,940.8 people per square mile...
. She holds a B.A. in Theater Studies and Acting from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and a M.M.
Master of Music
The Master of Music is the first graduate degree in Music awarded by universities and music conservatories. The M.Mus. combines advanced studies in an applied area of specialization with graduate-level academic study in subjects such as music history, music theory, or music pedagogy...
in Classical Voice from the Manhattan School of Music
Manhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
.
She is best known for her portrayal of Mimi in Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
's 2002-03 production of La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, for which she received a 2003 Tony Award
Special Tony Award
The Special Tony Award category includes the Lifetime Achievement Award and Special Tony Award. These are non-competitive awards, and the titles have changed over the years...
. Since then, Hopkins has performed around the United States and Europe in concerts, operas and musical theatre, at venues such as the Estates Theatre
Estates Theatre
The Estates Theatre or Stavovské divadlo is a historic theatre in Prague, Czech Republic. The Estates Theatre was annexed to the National Theatre in 1948 and currently draws on three artistic ensembles, opera, ballet, and drama, which perform at the Estates Theatre, the National Theatre , and the...
in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Wolf Trap
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, known locally in the Washington, D.C. area as simply Wolf Trap, is a performing arts center located on 130 acres of national park land in Wolf Trap, Virginia...
in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
, the Utah Symphony and Opera, and at several music festivals. She was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
The Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording has been awarded since 1961. The award was originally titled Best Classical Opera Production. The current title has been used since 1962....
for her role in the recording of Volpone with the Wolftrap Opera Company.
Early life and training
Hopkins was born in Simi Valley, CaliforniaSimi Valley, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Simi Valley had a population of 124,237. The population density was 2,940.8 people per square mile...
, and grew up all over the United States and Canada, from Los Angeles to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, North Dakota
North Dakota
North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....
, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
and Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
. Her mother is a Juilliard-trained pianist with whom she continues to collaborate. She attended the Waterford School
The Waterford School
Waterford School is a private school, located in Sandy, Utah, United States.-History:Waterford was founded in 1981 by the non-profit Waterford Institute as a research school...
in Sandy, Utah
Sandy, Utah
Sandy is a city in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States. It is a suburb of Salt Lake City. The population was 87,461 at the 2010 census, making it the sixth-largest city in Utah....
and began to study voice at age 16.
Hopkins received her B.A. in Theater Studies and Acting from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 2001. After her freshman year at Yale, she studied at the Scuola Insieme in Grado, Italy
Grado, Italy
Grado is a town and comune in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located on a peninsula of the Adriatic Sea between Venice and Trieste....
. The following summer she played the role of Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
at the Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua Institution
The Chautauqua Institution is a non-profit adult education center and summer resort located on 750 acres in Chautauqua, New York, 17 miles northwest of Jamestown in the western part of New York State...
Music Festival. Upon her return to Yale her sophomore year, she founded the Yale College Opera Company, playing Cleopatra in Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
's Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...
and performing Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
's one-woman opera, La Voix Humaine
La voix humaine
La voix humaine is a one-act opera for one character, with music by Francis Poulenc to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, based on his 1930 play. La voix humaine was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Salle Favart in Paris on 6 February 1959...
for her senior project. She also sang the role of Casilda in The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
for Yale's Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
Society, among other roles. Between her junior and senior years at Yale, Hopkins performed on tour as a soprano soloist in 21 multimedia concerts in Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
, Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria, while serving as a missionary
Missionary (LDS Church)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the most active modern practitioners of missionary work, with over 52,000 full-time missionaries worldwide, as of the end of 2010...
for the LDS Church.
She received her M.M.
Master of Music
The Master of Music is the first graduate degree in Music awarded by universities and music conservatories. The M.Mus. combines advanced studies in an applied area of specialization with graduate-level academic study in subjects such as music history, music theory, or music pedagogy...
in Classical Voice from the Manhattan School of Music
Manhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
in 2003, where she studied with Marlena Malas. In the summer of 2004, she studied at the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel with Trish McCaffrey.
Career
In 2002–03, while Hopkins completed her Master's Degree, she appeared on BroadwayBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
's production of La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
in the leading role of Mimi, sharing in a special ensemble Tony Award
Special Tony Award
The Special Tony Award category includes the Lifetime Achievement Award and Special Tony Award. These are non-competitive awards, and the titles have changed over the years...
. Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
noted, "The principals are, to a person, sexy, vital, utterly committed to the moment.... [At] the end of Act III... Jesús Garcia and Lisa Hopkins are affectingly somber... with resigned postures that suggest a haunted awareness of doom.... They brought tears to my eyes." Hopkins also appears on the production's cast album, singing the final act, and she sang excerpts from the role at the televised performance during the 2003 Tony Awards ceremony
57th Tony Awards
The 57th Annual Tony Awards was held at Radio City Music Hall on June 8, 2003 and broadcast by CBS television. The event was hosted for the first time by Hugh Jackman.-The ceremony:...
at Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...
.
Hopkins was the soprano soloist in the Mozart Requiem and Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate
Exsultate, jubilate
Exsultate, jubilate K. 165, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was written in 1773.This religious solo motet was composed at the time Mozart was visiting Milan....
with the Utah Symphony and Opera at the 2004 Deer Valley
Deer Valley
Deer Valley is an alpine ski resort in the Wasatch Range, located east of Salt Lake City, in Park City, Utah, United States. The resort, known for its upscale amenities, is consistently ranked among the top ski resorts in North America...
Music Festival. She was chosen to present a solo recital in March 2005, on the Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages....
Foundation roster, at St. Bartholomew's Church
Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, New York
St. Bartholomew's Church, commonly called St. Bart's, is a historic Episcopal parish founded in January 1835, and located on the east side of Park Avenue between 50th and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.-Former structures:...
in New York City as part of the "On Wings of Song" series. The same year, she created the role of Arianna in the U.S. premiere of Arianna in Creta with the Gotham Chamber Opera in New York City and played Cio-Cio San as a guest artist in a production of Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
at the University of Nebraska. In 2006, Hopkins received critical praise as Donna Anna in Don Juan in Prague, an avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
adaptation of Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, first performed in October 2006 at the Prague National Theatre and then in December 2006 at the BAM
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
New Wave Festival in Brooklyn, New York. Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
wrote, "The only member of the cast to escape the director's unmusical ministrations was Lisa Hopkins, who, as Donna Anna, managed to ignore the squeezebox screeches coming from the pit and speakers and deliver a sensitive lament."
In 2007, Opera News
Opera News
Opera News is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to support the Metropolitan Opera of New York City...
called Hopkins "the kind of camera-ready young singer today's marketing directors dream of. ... Fortunately, unlike all too many so-termed 'total package' artists these days [she] can also sing." Hopkins sang the role of Sofia in Rossini's one-act opera Il Signor Bruschino
Il signor Bruschino
Il signor Bruschino, ossia Il figlio per azzardo is a one act operatic farce by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa, based upon the play Le fils par hasard, ou ruse et folie by Alissan de Chazet and E.T.M. Ourry...
with Gotham Chamber Opera in January 2007. Back Stage
Back Stage
Back Stage is an entertainment-industry brand aimed at people working in film and the performing arts, with a special focus on casting, job opportunities, and career advice.Back Stage publishes a weekly tabloid-sized trade magazine in the U.S...
commented on the performance, "soprano Lisa Hopkins as Sofia proves a deft comedian while singing with impressive flair." Hopkins was also selected as a Wolf Trap Opera Company
Wolf Trap Opera Company
The Wolf Trap Opera Company produces a summer opera festival as part of the program of the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia....
Filene Young Artist, singing the role of Corvina in John Musto
John Musto
John Musto is an American composer and pianist. As a composer, he is active in opera, orchestral and chamber music, song, vocal ensemble, and solo piano works. As a pianist, he performs frequently as a soloist, alone and with orchestra, as a chamber musician, and with singers.-Career:Born in 1954...
's adaptation of Volpone
Volpone
Volpone is a comedy by Ben Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy, black comedy and beast fable...
(June, 2007) and the First Lady in Die Zauberflöte (August, 2007). The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
wrote, "Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller, so expressive with her big Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
eyes and fluttery voice, was deliciously funny as Corvina" (in Volpone) The recording of Volpone (and Hopkins as a principal soloist) was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
The Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording has been awarded since 1961. The award was originally titled Best Classical Opera Production. The current title has been used since 1962....
. In December 2007, she was the soprano soloist in the Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
in Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
.
In the summer of 2008, Hopkins was a resident artist at the Greenwich Music Festival, appearing as Amore in Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
's Return of Ulysses
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
and the soprano soloist in the love songs from Monteverdi's Eighth Book of Madrigals. After giving birth to her first child in 2008, Hopkins returned to the concert stage in May 2009, performing in the Sing for Hope
Sing For Hope
Sing for Hope is a charitable organization founded by opera singers Monica Yunus and Camille Zamora. The two New York City based vocalists and alumnae of the Juilliard School established Sing for Hope as a resource for New York artists who want to use their art to benefit the community through...
benefit concert at Yale University and the Bernstein MASS with the Utah Symphony. Hopkins was a soprano soloist at the Virginia Arts Festival
Virginia Arts Festival
The Virginia Arts Festival is an annual spring festival that brings dozens of performances to Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg, and surrounding communities. The festival was established in 1997, and has been bringing world-class artists to Virginia ever since...
in Bernstein’s MASS in April 2010. From June to August 2010, Hopkins played Grizabella in Cats
Cats (musical)
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
at the Tuacahn
Tuacahn
Tuacahn Amphitheatre and Center for the Arts is a nonprofit 501 arts organization nestled in the mouth of Padre Canyon below towering 1500 foot red sandstone cliffs in Ivins, Utah adjacent to Snow Canyon State Park...
Amphitheater in Ivins, Utah
Ivins, Utah
Ivins is a city in Washington County, Utah, United States. The population was 4,450 at the 2000 census, and it was estimated at 7,205 in 2006. Although Ivins was a town in 2000, it has since been classified as a fifth-class city by state law.-History:...
. The review in The Salt Lake Tribune commented that in the show's signature song, "Memory", Hopkins "creates a moment that's beautifully painful ... and melancholy with a glimmer of hope. Her voice seems to penetrate each word of the familiar lyrics, extracting the core meaning of her plea." In October 2011, Hopkins performed at the Mentors International
Enterprise Mentors International
Enterprise Mentors International is a 501, nonprofit organization based in Draper, Utah, that uses microenterprise, mentoring, and business training to alleviate poverty worldwide. Mentors International was officially founded in 1990 by a group of businessmen with extensive international business...
2011 Gala.
Hopkins teaches voice privately in Washington and New York City. She is a visiting member of the Voice Faculty at Dixie State College of Utah
Dixie State College of Utah
Dixie State College of Utah is a college located in St. George, Utah, United States.-History:...
.
External links
- Official website
- Lisa Hopkins at the IBDB database
- Yale Daily News feature on Hopkins from 2003
- "Singer makes European debut" - Deseret News
- "Vixen of 'Volpone'" interview of Hopkins about Musto's opera, with photo of Hopkins
- La boheme cast album review
- Shiels, Maggie. Photo of Hopkins as Mimi, BBC News, October 21, 2002
- Photos of Hopkins at 2009 Yale-Sing for Hope benefit
- Recording of Hopkins singing "O Divine Redeemer"