Soprano Corrie Donovan has been praised for her warm and lyrical lines, her charming presence on stage, and for surpassing the watermark in her performances. Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News described her as “another of the voices I’d be interested to hear more of.” This year Corrie performed the role of Sor Isabel, in the world premier of Fort Worth Opera’s, With Blood, With Ink. The opera was professionally recorded and has been published by Albany Records. Also, during the 2014 festival, Corrie starred in her second Frontiers concert as a neurotic attorney and judge in Matthew Peterson’s Voire Dire, while also starring as the Queen in Herschel Garfein’s, Rosencrantz an Guildenstern Are Dead. Additionally in 2014, she was a soloist for the Festival of American Art Song, featuring works by Ricky Ian Gordon, where the Fort Worth Weekly described her as, “…evoking a tempestuous sound that was both polished and distinctively powerful…”. Two weeks prior Corrie performed as a soprano apprentice for the annual, five-week, Baroque workshop, Il Cuore Canta, in New York City, that toured eight concerts between Cold Springs, NY and Manhattan. Earlier in the year she was the featured vocalist for the Bancroft Concert Series in Dallas for a collaboration with the Fine Arts Players and Avant Chamber Ballet of Dallas.
From 2011-2013 she was the resident soprano in the Fort Worth Opera Young Artist Studio. During her apprenticeship she starred as Barbarina in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Charito and Tisiphone in Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata, Echo in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos where critics painted her as “luminous”, and also starred as one of the three Sopranos in Philip Glass’s provocative chamber opera, Hydrogen Jukebox, under the direction of the Metropolitan Opera Conductor Stephen Osgood, which was hailed by D Magazine as “surely this year’s most significant area operatic event”. She also covered the roles of Young Alyce in Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied, Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème, and Bea in Heggie’s Three Decembers. Coincidentally, in 2012, she performed the role of Bea in Three Decembers with the International Vocal Arts Institute in Virginia, under the baton of Metropolitan Opera Conductor Paul Nadler. She was also featured in Fort Worth Opera’s first Frontiers Showcase, which presents new works by rising American composers. In the 2013 Frontier’s concert, she debuted the role of Sister 1 in Stephen Eddin’s Why I Live at the P.O. Box, where she was congratulated for “going to town as the narrating Sister 1, smacking her lips over every syllable of the Pretty-Sweet poison she dispenses,” while also performing the roles of Victoria Reilly in Patrick Soluri’s Embedded, and Ms. Ingram in Louis Karchin’s Jane Eyre.
Corrie has performed as a soloist with many ensembles in the area, including the Fort Worth Hall Ensemble in their Cattle Baron Concert at Thistle Hill Mansion, the Cliburn’s, Modern at the Modern concert that presented music with and by the award-winning American composer John Bucchino, the Los Colinas Symphony Orchestra, the Music of the Americas World Premiere Concert, and the Corpus Christi Symphony.
In 2012, Corrie received the Jennifer White Memorial Award from Shreveport’s Singer of the Year Competition, while also being named one of the Top Ten Most Beautiful women in Fort Worth by the Fort Worth City Magazine. Despite having a love and affinity for classical music, Corrie started as and still is an avid singer of jazz, contemporary, musical theater, and pop music. This year she is performing in her second production with the lyric theater in Jerome Moross’s, The Golden Apple, before which she performed in their production of Sigmund Romberg’s, Desert Song. Corrie often works with hybrid genres of music, bending and exploring the colors and depths of vocal expression, and in 2013, Corrie starred as one of Les Trois Divas for the Champagne Concert Series, featuring an eclectic concert of opera, jazz, cabaret, and pop. Additionally, Corrie spent her childhood traveling over seas to the UK with her Scottish father, where she and her sister regularly performed Celtic music together. Further influencing her love for all genres of music, Corrie received the Most Promising Vocalist prize in the USA World Showcase Tour in Las Vegas in 2005 singing a song made famous by Celine Dion.