Champagne and Song
Oberlin Professor Salvatore Champagne Giving Smith Chapel Recital
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, hosts an evening of English, French, and Italian art songs presented by Salvatore Champagne, associate professor of singing at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, on Monday, April 21.
Champagne’s recital will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel and is free and open to the public. He will be accompanied by John Champagne, his brother and an associate professor of English at Penn State Behrend.
Salvatore Champagne began his professional singing career as soloist for the European tour of Leonard Bernstein’s Songfest. He then joined the ensemble of the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany, appearing in a wide range of lyric tenor roles, including Mozart’s Tamino, Rossini’s Almaviva, and Strauss’s Henry. Guest engagements took him to some of Europe’s most prestigious opera houses: Operhaus Zurich, Opera du Rhin in Strasbourg, Teatro Bellini in Catania, and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.
In addition to his operatic performances, Champagne is a frequent concert and recital singer. He has appeared with the London Philharmonia, Cologne Philharmonic, and VARA radio orchestra, and received numerous awards, including prizes at the 1989 Mirjam Helin Competition in Helsinki and the 1990 International Vocal Competition in s’Hertogenbosch, Holland. He joined the Oberlin faculty in 2004.
As a student at New York University, John Champagne supported himself as an accompanist for ballet classes and at cabarets such as Jan Wallman’s, the Ballroom, and the Duplex. Locally he has performed as either an actor or accompanist with the Erie Playhouse, the Roadhouse Theater, the Director’s Circle Theater, the Academy Theater in Meadville, and the Studio Theatre at Penn State Behrend.