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The American baritone and music pedagogue, Gerald Dolter, is a graduate of Indiana University’s Schools of Music and Business. He was was a National Winner in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 1984. He won the Premio Galeffi at Italy’s Concorso Internazional per Voci Verdiane in 1984, and in 1986 won first place in the International Vocal Competition of Ghent, Belgium.
Gerald Dolter has established himself in opera houses and concert halls both in the USA and Europe. Opern Welt magazine has described his performances as “radiant,” by the Frankfurter Rundschau as “powerful baritonal presence,” and by England’s Opera magazine as “electrifying.” His operatic credits include appearances with the Pittsburgh, New Jersey State, Tulsa, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Arizona opera companies, as well as the opera companies of Frankfurt, Mannheim, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Düsseldorf, Gelsenkirchen, Krefeld, and Montpellier. From 1985 to 1991, he was the leading baritone with Germany’s Bremen Opera. His repertoire there included such diverse characterizations as Germont in La Traviata, Escamillo in Carmen, and Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress. His operatic repertoire includes more than 85 characterizations.
Gerald Dolter joined the voice faculty at the Texas Tech School of Music in the fall of 1995. He became the Director of TTU Music Theatre in 1998. He has sought to program a wide variety of works to benefit students and the public interest. Johann Strauss’ operetta Die Fledermaus, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, a world premiere music drama, Bellini’s War, by Steven Paxton and Verdi’s La Traviata are a sampling. He has also built a reputation for staging works in unusual locations. His production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, staged in a local Lubbock hotel atrium, represented a drastic departure for normal theatrical venues, in which he made use of the natural trees, brooks, pools, and shrubs to enhance the required stage settings. Last spring he directed a new production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte for Texas Tech Music Theatre, which toured to the National Theatre of Honduras. His upcoming directing activities will include new productions of Iolanthe for TTU Music Theatre and Les Miserables for the City of Lubbock.
Gerald Dolter’s latest venture has been the creation of a musical theatre production company, Lubbock Moonlight Musicals. Since its inception in summer of 2006, the company has produced many, grand-scale musicals in the outdoor setting of Lubbock’s Wells Fargo Amphitheatre. High school and college students have benefited from this new company. In addition to valuable, professional stage experience, these students are paid stipends as administrators, stage performers, pit musicians and stage technicians. As a result of the company’s success, a new dinner-theatre series, Moonlight Dinner Theatre, has spun off from summer operations. In addition, tour performances of LMM musicals have been given throughout Texas and New Mexico. Dolter is also a frequent adjudicator for that competition at both the district and regional levels. |
