Mark Almy

Adjunct Faculty
Commercial Voice, Class Voice, Musical Theatre, Applied Voice

A member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Mark Almy has taught at University of Redlands, Riverside Community College, and California State University at San Bernardino.

Currently, he teaches at College of the Desert, where he has directed many operas in full production, and at Idyllwild Arts Academy. In 2009, he was awarded the distinction of College of the Desert's Outstanding Adjunct Faculty of the Year.

As a singer, Almy trained with Janet Parlova and Marcie Stapp of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; Dewey Camp of San Francisco State University; Richard Owens, founder of the American Institute of Musical Studies; Mark Haffner of the San Francisco Opera; and William Vendice of the Los Angeles Opera. He received additional instruction from Sherrill Milnes, Giorgio Tozzi, stage director Daniel Helfgott and acting coach Ethel Evans.

After studying at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, he made his European debut at the Opera of Toulon, France.

In total, Almy has performed over 90 roles in opera and music theater, as well as solo parts in symphonic and choral works with, among others, Orlando Opera, Des Moines Opera, Opera de Toulon, San Francisco City College Summer Opera, San Francisco Pocket Opera, San Francisco Lamplighters, Oakland Opera, Monterey Opera, Pacific Repertory Opera, Florida Symphony, Fremont-Newark Symphony, Sonoma Opera, West Bay Opera, East Bay Opera, Marin Civic Light Opera, San Bernardino Civic Light Opera, Glendale Center Theater, Redlands Bowl, Inland Empire Symphony, McCallum Theatre, Palm Canyon Theater, and Annenberg Theater.

Roles include Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, Figaro (Marriage of Figaro and Barber of Seville), Scarpia (Tosca), Marcello and Schaunard (La Boheme), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), Lescaut (Manon Lescaut and Manon), Michele (Il Tabarro), Guglielmo and Don Alfonso (Cosi Fan Tutte), Dandini and Don Magnifico (Cenerentola), Belcore (Elixir of Love), Malatesta (Don Pasquale), John the Baptist (Salome), Germont (La Traviata), Falke (Fledermaus), Sweeney Todd, Don Quixote (Man of La Mancha), Emile DeBecque (South Pacific), Inspector Javert (Les Miserables), Arthur (Camelot and Spamalot), the Pirate King (Pirates of Penzance), Georges (Cage aux Folles), Henry Higgins (My Fair Lady), Frederick Eggerman (Little Night Music), Captain Von Trapp (Sound of Music), El Gallo (Fantasticks) and the lead in Jekyll & Hyde. Symphony orchestras and chorales have engaged him for leading baritone and bass parts in Carmina Burana, the Faure and Brahms Requiems, Messiah, and similar works.

Almy has performed in productions with noted performers in both the classical and theater worlds, including Sherrill Milnes and Martha Raye, and has sung under the baton of conductors Kent Nagano, Julius Rudel, Ed Flath, Franz Vote, Karen Keltner, Stewart Robertson, and Jan Popper.

For College of the Desert he directed productions of Dido and Aeneus, Magic Flute, Marriage of Figaro, Old Maid and the Thief, Elixir of Love, Barber of Seville, La Sonnambula, Italian Girl in Algieri, La Boheme, Patience, Grand Duke, Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci, The Impressario, The Telephone, Serva Padrona, and Rent; as well as Amahl and the Night Visitors and La Traviata for California Opera Ballet. For this, as well as for other work locally, Almy has received 18 Desert Theatre League awards over the years, including the Michael Grossman award in recognition of dedication to the craft of theater production.

As a Teaching Artist with the McCallum Theater Institute in Palm Desert, California, Mark creates and facilitates workshops in Aesthetic Education throughout the Coachella Valley school systems and helps guide other Teaching Artists in their development.

As a consultant for Lincoln Center Institute in New York he facilitated projects in Syracuse, Long Island, Buffalo, Santa Fe, Hong Kong, Manitoba, and Seoul, Korea from 2005 through 2011.