Mezzo-soprano Phyllis Pancella, a native of St. Louis, was a prizewinner in the 1988 McAllister opera competition and the 1990 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and she won the 1993 Award of Excellence from the Lotos Foundation, under whose auspices she made her New York recital debut that year at Weill Recital Hall. Her career has taken her to opera houses in the United States and abroad. At Glimmerglass Opera in 1996 she sang the title role in Jack Beeson’s Lizzie Borden, which she repeated at New York City Opera in 1999, telecast live on PBS. Her European debut was at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, and in the concert hall she has appeared with the National Symphony, the Minnesota, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and New World symphony orchestras, as well as the Orchestra della Toscana and the Opéra de Lyon. An active recitalist, she has toured with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and appeared with it at Lincoln Center for the New York premiere of Dominick Argento’s Miss Manners on Music, a song cycle composed for her. She made her recording debut as Marcellina in a 1991 release, Le Nozze di Figaro, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Daniel Barenboim.
