Liederabend, featuring Kyle Erdos-Knapp, tenor

About Kyle Erdos-Knapp:

Though he is particularly at home in the florid lyric tenor roles of Mozart, Handel, and the bel canto composers, Kyle's versatility allows for a resume that ranges from the psychological complexity of Britten to the comic baritone roles of Gilbert and Sullivan, from the under-performed masterpieces of early opera to world premieres of new works. He moves between the disciplines of opera, operetta, chamber music, musical theater, dance, contemporary and experimental music, straight theater, and popular music with ease and boundless enthusiasm.

In the summer of 2011 Kyle was engaged by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis to cover the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment and sing several roles in Joshua’s Boots. He then went to the Crested Butte Music Festival, where he performed the roles of Tebaldo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Remendado in Carmen. Spring of 2012 he was back at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis where he sang the role of Tobias in Sweeney Todd to great critical acclaim, a role he will reprise at Pensacola Opera this fall. Mr. Knapp will spend the winter as a member of Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artist Program where he will sing Peter Quint / the Prologue in The Turn of the Screw.

A frequent and enthusiastic performer of recital and oratorio, he has been heard as soloist in Mozart, Bach, Kodály, Monteverdi, Britten, and Mendelssohn with organizations such as The Choral Arts Society of Cleveland and Washington University’s German Festival. Kyle actively pursues a special passion for early music, having performed extensively with Grammy-winning lutenist Paul O'Dette, including the title role of Lully's Thésée and Testo in Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. 

His training includes the prestigious Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, after which he took part in the inaugural season of the Wolf Trap Opera Studio in 2007 before going on to play ten leading roles over three seasons with the Ohio Light Opera.

Kyle is two-time prize winner at the Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions and has won the University of Michigan Concerto Competition (singing Britten's Les Illuminations de Rimbaud). He has sung under the batons of Kenneth Kiesler, Martin Katz, Stephen Lord, Michael Borowitz, Benton Hess, Steven Byess, and many others. Among the directors he has worked with are Joshua Major, Steven Daigle, Michael Shell, Ted Christopher, and Robin Guarino. He can be heard in leading roles on the Albany Records label on recordings of Sousa's El Capitan and Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience and The Mikado.

Outside of his performing, Kyle is an avid writer of both fiction and non-fiction, including essays and reviews on film and both classical and popular music, and is a follower and seeker-out of independent and underground music and film. He has written several of his own compositions in the genres of art song, popular, choral, and instrumental music. An accomplished pianist, Kyle also moonlights as an accompanist for other singers and instrumentalists.