Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall 2019
Refinersfire presents French bass-baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer in his only 2019 North American appearance on Monday, June 24 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Twice nominated for Grammy Awards (first for his work on "Mademoiselle; Unknown Music of Nadia Boulanger", [NAXOS] and again on Jean-Baptiste Lully's Alceste [Aparté]), Crossley-Mercer has risen to become one of the world's most sought-after bass baritones of his generation. The 2018-2019 season has seen him in Hippolyte et Arice in Zurich, in Les Boreades in Dijon, in the St. Matthew Passion in Lisbon, in L'enfance du Christ un Paris, in Mozart's Requiem in Toulon, in Guilaume Tell in Vienna, in Orlando paladino in Munich, and Don Giovanni in Santiago.
Here's how Opera News headed its review of the Dallas Opera's 2016 of Manon:
The chief splendor of the evening came from the singers. Baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer turned Manon’s cousin, Lescaut, into a complex dramatic figure, a louche gambler and seducer . . . [he] proved his ability to combine the delicacy of a voice that has done wonders on the recital stage with a resonant power that projects through the opera hall.
The French FORUMOPERA wrote this about his performances of Michael Linton's Carmina Catulli:
Amid this gasping eroticism, the French-Irish baritone, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, acquits himself con brio. What a vocal palette is his! It ranges from the most suffocating sensuality expressed in « Nulla potest mulier », sung in a whisper, as is « Mellitos oculos tuos », to raging anger and a lover’s despair. The singer’s every vocal subtlety is explored, even up to falsetto.
Other critics have described his performances as "dazzling", and "a revelation."
With award winning pianist Jason Paul Peterson, Crossle-Mercer presents a program featuring Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe along with the premier of settings of poems by Cody Franchetti and cowboy songs by composer Michael Linton.