René Barbera

Tenor René Barbera has been increasingly visible in the U.S. and Europe since winning the 2008 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and sweeping the top prizes at the 2011 Operalia Competition. While his repertoire takes in a range of music for the concert and opera stages, he has specialized in the works of Verdi, Rossini, and Donizetti. In 2022, Barbera was heard on recordings of Rossini's Stabat Mater and he starred in a production of Verdi's La traviata opposite Lisette Oropesa. Barbera was born in Laredo, Texas, and lived there until he was nine, when his family moved to San Antonio. He began music training on piano and sang as a boy soprano in a choir. He continued singing in choir through grade school and planned to become a high school choir director. Encouraged to pursue a performance degree, Barbera attended the University of Texas at San Antonio and then moved to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, leaving the school without a degree in 2008 owing to time spent auditioning and in competitions. That was a pivotal year for Barbera: he attended the summer program of the Merola Opera, spent several months in the artist program of the Florida Grand Opera, and won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. That win propelled him to the young artist program of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where Barbera spent three seasons. At the 2011 Operalia Competition, Barbera became the first-ever singer to earn the three top prizes when he captured the First Prize, the Plácido Domingo Zarzuela Prize, and the Audience Prize. Major appearances followed Barbera's Operalia showing: he made debuts at La Scala in Milan (as Ernesto in Donizetti's Don Pasquale), New York's Metropolitan Opera (as Lindoro in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri), and Palermo's Teatro Massimo (as Alfredo in Verdi's La traviata), among others. Barbera's recording debut came on a 2015 Naxos release, on which he performed the Canciones de Lorca of William Bolcom with Carl St. Clair leading the Pacific Symphony. Barbera returned in 2021, earning rave reviews as Idamore on an Opera Rara recording of Donizetti's mostly forgotten opera Il Paria, with Sir Mark Elder conducting the Britten Sinfonia. Barbera has also been active on the concert stage, performing the Verdi Requiem on tour with Teodor Currentzis leading his MusicAeterna ensemble and Rossini's Stabat Mater with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno; a recording of the latter appeared in 2022. That year, Barbera was heard opposite soprano Lisette Oropesa on a PentaTone Classics recording of Verdi's La traviata, with Daniel Oren leading the Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden and Dresdner Philharmonie.
© Keith Finke /TiVo