Ms. Lewis made her debut with the Seattle Choral Company singing the title role in the Scott Joplin opera Treemonisha. She was also seen in the 2006 debut production of Black Box Opera Theater. Ms. Lewis has performed the Seattle Opera Guild’s previews annually since she was first engaged by the Guild to portray the Druid priestess in scenes from Norma in 2003. Ms. Lewis sang Florencia in Florencia en el Amazonas by Daniel Catan, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, and Tosca in subsequent previews. She toured with N.O.I.S.E., Northwest Opera in Schools Etcetera, as Pamina in The Magic Flute, Nicklausse in the doll act from The Tales of Hoffmann, and as Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel. In 2000, Ms. Lewis premiered the lead role in Garrett Fisher’s opera Sally Hemings, the story of the slave mistress of Thomas Jefferson, at On the Boards' Northwest New Works Festival and later reprised the role in the film production of the opera.
Ms. Lewis has been privileged to combine her love of singing and her interest in dance on many occasions. In 2000 she joined Seattle’s S.D. Prism Dance Theater. Her first performance with the company was in the work Gatherings, where she added vocal improvisations to duets that combined classical ballet with jazz choreography. In 2001 Ms. Lewis accompanied the Prism dancers at The Broadway Performance Hall in Seattle in Jewels of Harlem, a piece by S.D. Prism’s Artistic Director, Sonia Dawkins. In that same year, she was the vocalist in Silk Road, a multimedia production by A.C. Petersen, inspired by the lives of immigrant women working in sweatshops and featuring dance, music, video and field-recorded voices. Most recently she was cantante in Tango Cabaret, starring Fabian Salas of The Tango Lesson, a dream come true for this vocalist with Argentine Tango as a second love.
While in Seattle Ms. Lewis has performed for Greg Thompson Productions, Puget Sound Opera, The Eastside Performance Group, The Ladies Musical Club, Classic Cascade Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet School and ArtsWest, where she made her 2005 musical theater debut as Erzulie, the goddess of love, in Once on this Island. She looks forward to exploring future roles in musical theater as well as opera. Voice teachers and coaches have included Davida L. Kagen, W. Stephen Smith, Richard Bado, Sylvia Plyler, Garnett Bruce and Wesley Balk.
Ms. Lewis has been soloist in several churches as well as in the oratorios Handel’s Messiah, Respighi’s Laud to the Nativity, Mozart’s Mass in c minor and Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer. Ms. Lewis’ other opera credits include Monica in The Medium, Anna Maurrant in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene at the University of Washington, and Despina in Cosi fan tutte at the Aspen Opera Theater Center.
For more on this artist, please visit: Ellaina.info
