Alta Boover

Dr. Alta Boover holds degrees from Skidmore College (B.A.) The Eastman School of Music (M.M. Vocal Performance and Literature) and the University of Texas at Austin (D.M.A. Opera Performance).  Her students have performed in concert halls, opera houses and performance venues around the world — on Broadway and on National Broadway Tours. Many have earned national recognition for top placement in competitions through the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, through the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the American Collegiate Theatre Festival, and on televised singing competitions.

As a performer, Dr. Boover is praised by audiences and critics for her “richly timbred voice with manifest and endearing sincerity” (Fanfare) and her “perfect comic timing” (Cleveland Plain Dealer). “She expresses joie de vivre as well as she expresses tragedy. She presents superlative vocalism, expressive and sensitive to the words.” (American Record Guide).  

In New York, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall as a soloist in Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, and Haydn’s Creation.  She appeared at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center as the Narrator in Peter and the Wolf as well as in the premiere of a new version of Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland, both for the premiere and for a return engagement.  On the operatic stage, favorite roles include Julia Child in Bon Appétit!,  Old Lady in Candide, Marcellina in Il Nozze di Figaro, Prince Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus, Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance, Berta in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, with companies including Opera Carolina, Toledo Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Austin Lyric Opera, Shreveport Opera, Northern Lights Music Festival, and Des Moines Metro Opera. Most recently she has taken on the title role in the two-person play Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins by Stephen Temperley in collaboration with her faculty colleague, and Broadway veteran Jacob ben Widmar

Dr.. Boover spent six seasons with the Ohio Light Opera, the only professional company in the United States entirely devoted to the preservation of operetta.  With them, she honed her skill as a performer of the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, and had well over 400 performances in over 50 separate productions of European and American operetta.

She has appeared as a concert and oratorio soloist with the New York Chamber Orchestra, the Helena Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (MI and NY), the Toledo Symphony, the Shreveport Symphony, the North Mississippi Symphony, the Texarkana Regional Chorale, the Temple Symphony, the Texas Symphony, and locally with Dearborn Symphony, Oakland Symphony, and the Macomb Symphony in performances including Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Bach’s St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, Magnificat, Weinachts Oratorio, and Handel’s Messiah.

Internationally, she toured Brazil as the alto soloist in a resurrection of the work of Jose Mauricio Nuñes Garcia in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as gave the World Premiere performance of Robert Orledge’s orchestration of Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis at the International Congress on Claude Debussy.  She presents and performs American Operetta across the US, and shared that presentation in the home of Operetta-- Vienna, Austria at the 10th International Congress of Voice Teachers. She has presented on Vocal Health and Function for Educators in Tokyo, Japan. She has presented chamber music recitals in Toronto, Limoges, and Paris with repertoire by Harriett Abrams, Mahler, Brahms, Bernstein and Gershwin.

She recorded the role of Dame Paula in Victor Herbert's Sweethearts with Albany Records for which she was lauded by Opera News for her "hefty mezzo voice, and strong characterization that dominated the stage."  She can also be heard on the Albany Records and Operetta Archives labels as Dame Durden in Reginald  deKoven's operetta Robin Hood, Aunt Mathilde in Sigmund Romberg’s Maytime and most recently recorded Princess Marghanza in John Phillip Sousa’s comic operetta El Capitan.

She commissioned a companion piece for Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben called A Woman’s Life (and Love)  by LA composer Sara Carina Graef.  With her colleague Tian Tian, she recorded both pieces and their album Life and Love (Centaur, 2020) is available on all streaming platforms and wherever albums are sold. This piece offers a modern twist on Schumann’s classic work, setting texts culled from Twitter, and the poetry of Taije Silverman, Melissa Stein and Morgan Parker.

A champion of the works of women composers, she created a program entitled “By Her Hand: 400 years of music by women.” This was initiated by an invitation from the Detroit Institute of Arts and Chamber Music at the Scarab Club to create a musical companion to their exhibit By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800.  It was premiered in the DIA’s Diego Rivera Court.  Her collaborative multi-media performance “Illuminations: The Work of Hildegard of Bingen” was created with graphic design colleague Kimmie Fabian Parker, and has toured to cathedrals in cities in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Boston.

Her album Of Time and Love (Centaur, 2023) with John Alexander Madison, viola and Mary Siciliano, piano,  features musical settings of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 63-66 by French composer Nicolas Bacri along with music by Charles Loeffler and Johannes Brahms. It was featured in American Record Guide’s Critic’s Choice: Best of 2023.

Please visit: http://www.altadantzler.com for upcoming events and further information.