Noted Opera Singer Alicia Berneche '93 to Teach and Perform April 4-5

March 27, 2002

March 27, 2002, Greencastle, Ind. - Soprano Alicia Berneche, DePauw University School of Music graduate and voice student of Professor Vergene Miller, will return to her alma mater next week to work with DePauw students and present a performance. Berneche, a 1993 DePauw graduate who received international praise for her starring role as Daisy Buchanan in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of The Great Gatsby in the fall of 2000, will meet with students at noon, April 4, 2002, over a "brown bag lunch" in the "fishbowl" of the Memorial Student Union Building. At 1 p.m. she'll present a master class in Thompson Recital Hall. The following evening, Friday, April 5, Berneche will perform a free 7:30 p.m. recital in Thompson.

No stranger to standard repertoire, Alicia Berneche just performed the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Skylight Opera, and has essayed such roles as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Adina in L'elisir d'amore, and Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann. Berneche will soon appear with the Kentucky Opera as Norina in Don Pasquale, and is also set to perform with the Arizona Opera, Virginia Opera, Sarasota Opera, and the New York Metropolitan Opera, where she will be covering Dawn Upshaw in the second round of performances of The Great Gatsby.

A January 2001 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, entitled entitled "Lighting up the Skylight: Rising star Alicia Berneche to tackle classic role," noted, "she went off to DePauw University, a small liberal arts school in nearby Greencastle, Ind. There, in January of 1990, she found Vergene Miller, who remains her voice teacher. In addition to her DePauw bachelor's degree, she holds a graduate performance diploma from the Peabody Conservatory of Baltimore."

The article continues, "'I was gone on sabbatical the first semester,' Miller recalled in a phone interview from Greencastle. 'This little girl came to the door. She said: 'I waited for you. You tell me what to do and I'll be able to do it.' She was terribly talented. She sang 'Queen of the Night' (a notoriously difficult aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute) her first year. In her junior year she started winning contests and everything started to click.'"

You can read the entire article online at the Journal Sentinel's web site by clicking here.

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