Faculty

• Ellen Douglas Schlaefer, Director of Opera Studies
• Walter Cuttino, Associate Professor Tenor
• Janet Hopkins, Assistant Professor, Mezzo soprano
• Lynn Kompass, vocal coach
• Tina Milhorn Stallard Assistant Professor; Soprano
• Jacob Will, Assistant Professor, Bass-baritone
• Laury Christie, Emeritus Professor; Soprano, Alexander Technique
• Peter Barton, Instructor; Baritone

Dedicated to arts education, Schlaefer is founder and general director of FBN Productions, Inc. Opera for Kids, a touring company based in South Carolina, specializing in bringing opera into the schools of the Southeast. FBN has shared the joys of live opera with over 150,000 young people. www.operaforkids.org She has also worked with the young artist programs for The Santa Fe Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Carolina, Baltimore Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Connecticut Opera, Houston Ebony Opera Guild, Dayton Opera, Intermezzo and Opera Colorado. Upcoming engagements include In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play) for Trustus Theatre and
La Boheme for Green Mountain Opera Festival

Walter Cuttino,
Associate Professor of Voice
Walter Cuttino received his Bachelor of Music in Voice from the University of South Carolina and his Master of Music in Voice and an Artist Diploma in Opera from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Upon completing his formal education, Mr. Cuttino performed throughout Europe, with over 950 operatic appearances to his credit. Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Count Almaviva in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Tamino in Mozart's The Magic Flute, Lenski in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème are among the more than 40 roles in his repertoire. He has also performed over 250 concerts, including a concert tour with the late Leonard Bernstein to London and Moscow. He has been on the University of South Carolina faculty since 1996. Recent engagements include Alfredo in La Traviata with the University of Florida and MacHeath for Opera at USC's production of The Three Penny Opera.

Lynn Kompass
Associate Professor of Voice, Vocal Coach
Pianist Lynn Kompass maintains an active career as vocal coach, chamber musician, recital collaborator, and teacher. She has been teaching at the University of South Carolina since 2002. Ms. Kompass has participated in the Steans Vocal Institute (Ravinia Music Festival), Aspen Music Festival, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, where she worked with Margo Garrett, Roger Vignoles, and Martin Isepp. As an opera coach, Ms. Kompass has worked at the University of Michigan, University of Tennessee, Aspen Opera Theater, Palmetto Opera, and Opera Brasil. Ms. Kompass has also performed in association with Ravinia Music Festival, Chicago Opera Theater, Chicago Chamber Musicians, Michigan Chamber Players, and Chicago Civic Orchestra. Her performances this past season have included recitals at Weill Recital Hall in New York City, Strings in the Mountain Festival, University of Texas at Austin, and the International Conference of Arts and Humanities in Honolulu. Lynn Kompass received her graduate degrees in Collaborative Piano at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Martin Katz and Katherine Collier.

Tina Milhorn Stallard, Soprano Associate Professor of Voice
Active as a concert artist, soprano Tina Milhorn Stallard has performed solos in works such as Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation, Bach’s St. John Passion, and Handel’s Messiah. She is a featured soloist on the soon-to-be released recording of the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati. Tina has apprenticed with Central City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, and Kentucky Opera, and her operatic roles include Beth in Little Women at Opera Omaha and Central City, Barbarina in the Italian premier of Argento’s Casanova’s Homecoming at the Opera Theatre and Music Festival of Lucca, and Abigail in The Crucible at the College-Conservatory of Music. In addition, she was a national finalist of the Artist Awards sponsored by the National Association of Teachers of Singing, district winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, semi-finalist of the Eleanor McCollum Competition sponsored by Houston Grand Opera and winner of the Grace Moore Vocal Competition. She received the Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where she studied with Barbara Honn, and is an alumnus of Belmont University and the University of Kentucky.

Jacob Will, Bass-baritone
Associate Professor
Bass-baritone Jacob Will made his New York Philharmonic debut as soloist in the American Premiere of the Messa per Rossini, a performance televised live nationwide.

An experienced concert artist, Mr. Will has appeared with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Vladamir Ashkenazy and with the Cabrillo Festival under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. He has sung with the San Francisco Symphony in the St. Matthew Passion, with the International Bach Festival of Schaffhausen, Switzerland in the St. John Passion, and with the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra in Frank Martin's Le mystère de la Nativité. He has also recorded Cherubini’s Messe solennelle under Helmuth Rilling and Zemlinsky’s Kleider Machen Leute under Ralf Weikert.

Mr. Will has sung for many years with the Zürich Opera appearing in roles such as Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Mustafa in L'Italiana in Algeri, and Colline in La Boheme. Other companies with which Mr. Will has appeared include the New York City Opera as Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, Vancouver Opera as Oroveso in Norma, the Bavarian State Opera as Samuel in Un Ballo in Maschera and the San Francisco Opera as Masetto in Don Giovanni.

A native of Hartsville, South Carolina, Mr. Will attended Furman University and graduated from the University of South Carolina and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He participated in the Merola and Adler Fellowship Programs of the San Francisco Opera and has been a prizewinner in various international singing competitions including the Munich Competition and the Queen Elizabeth Competition of Brussels.

Peter Barton, Baritone
Instructor
Peter Barton, baritone, trained in opera, music and drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas at Austin. He recently obtained his Master of Music degree from Winthrop University and completed his doctorate in voice performance at the University of South Carolina in Fall 2011. His voice teaching background includes many years of private voice studio teaching as well as an institutional position with Georgetown University.

Mr. Barton was involved in recital work, musical theater and opera in the Washington DC area for fifteen years. He performed with the Washington Opera Society for five seasons, the Maryland Opera Studio for four seasons and has given recitals at Georgetown University and American University. He has been active in the Southeast region for the last five years, performing Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro and the title role in Gianni Schicchi. Recently, he sang as the baritone soloist with the USC Chorus in their performance of the Brahms Requiem.

Other major roles include: Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Germont in La Traviata, Michele in Il Tabarro, Ravenal in Showboat, Tommy in Brigadoon, Billy Bigelow in Carousel and the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance.

At Georgetown University, he directed all performing arts programs and was instrumental in establishing an Artist in Residence program, which brought prominent musicians and artists to the university community. For the last eight years, he has been the Director of the Vocal Program for the Amalfi Coast Music & Arts Festival in Italy.

Mr. Barton worked for Price Waterhouse, The Export Import Bank of the U.S. and Fannie Mae in the business, technology and finance world. In higher education, he worked for George Washington University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he was Director of Enterprise Information Management.

Laury Christie, Soprano
Emeritus Professor Voice and Alexander Technique
Laury Christie has had an extensive singing career that bridges the USA and Europe. She has performed over 30 major opera roles in the lyric and coloratura soprano repertoire. Her solo debut was with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She sang in a concert version of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas conducted by Antonio Janegro. Her operatic stage debut followed with the Milwaukee Opera as Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Ms. Christie made her European debut in Münster, Germany, with the City Theater, under the musical direction of Alfred Walter, as Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Other engagements included theaters in Detmold, Karlsruhe, Osnabrück, Innsbruck, Stuttgart, and Hannover, as lead lyric-coloratura.

Ms. Christie has performed with renowned conductors Georg Solti, Antonio Janegro, Erich Leinsdorf, Carl Maria Giulini, Margaret Hillis, and Robert Shaw.

Appearances in the USA include soloist with the Boston, Chicgao, and Milwaukee Symphonies, at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC, and on public radio.