LAURA VIRELLA

"Silky toned" Puerto Rican mezzo-soprano Laura Virella makes her company debut with Long Beach Opera in the title role of Frida by Robert Xavier Rodriguez in June 2017.

She is carving her place in modern opera after her 2016 debut as Mrs. Grose in Britten's The Turn of the Screw with the Miami Music Festival (under the baton of Caren Levine of The Metropolitan Opera), a role that she revisited this past January with DC Public Opera.

2015 marked debuts in Europe: first as Frau Reich with Theater Rudolstadt, in her first German operetta, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, where she was summoned up with three weeks' notice to replace 3 casts in 7 performances; then came Carmen under the baton of Diego Martín Etxebarría, in a raw stage interpretation by Susana Gómez, as part of the Festival de Santa Florentina in Catalunya. An unexpected second performance on the following day awarded her rave reviews of the press, who described her as "fabulous," "powerful" and "excellent." Two weeks later, she debuted as Dorabella at the Teatro Comunale di Narni, Italy.

In 2012, she was hailed as an "impressive, fervent Octavian" by the Austrian press, after a concert rendition together with Kammersängerin Linda Watson under the baton of Gerrit Prießnitz in Graz's prestigious Stefaniensaal. That same year, she was awarded second place to Patricia Racette as Best Actress in Opera by the DC Theatre Scene awards after her portrayal of Moreno Torroba's Luisa Fernanda, where she "demonstrated an impressive emotional range in her acting as she effortlessly projects nuance from ebullience to melancholia in her phrasing." Other roles have included, Rosina, Cherubino, Enfant, Prince Charmant, Serse, Bianca (The Rape of Lucretia), Hansel, Cenerentola, Desideria (The Saint of Bleecker Street) and Maddalena, which also got attention from the press for being "just as vulnerable to the charms of the Duke as Gilda was--and convincingly persuasive with her brother as she begged him to spare the Duke's life, even as he sings the famous 'La donna è mobile', driving the audience wild."

Virella is a strong proponent of song literature and intimate, themed recital settings. She has collaborated in cinema, composing and performing the theme song "Época de grito" for the short film Dream of Vermilion, and is currently involved in a project that launched in NYC's The Cell to put 20th- and 21st-century Puerto Rican art song on the scene.