Let’s just get this out of the way: Michael Chioldi has a supremely sexy voice. Rich, commanding, relentlessly masculine, and exciting—one can easily imagine Verdi and Puccini themselves wishing to compose roles for this talent. Equally noted as a powerful and elegant actor, this is the sort of complete package that gets noticed by the big houses. And, indeed, quite early in his career, Chioldi was noticed by several big houses, including the Metropolitan Opera. One could say he started his career path at the very top.
And then, as paths sometimes do, it took some colorful turns.
Chioldi refers to himself as a farm boy. He grew up in Avonmore, Pennsylvania, a tiny coal mining community 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, and enjoyed a bucolic childhood. “Around five o’clock my mother would scream out the door, ‘Michael! Time for dinner!’ I’d be down the street, someone’s phone would ring, and they’d say, ‘Your mother says it’s time to go home for dinner!’ I loved growing up like that. It was a lot of fun.”
The family, second generation Italian and “either Austrian or Polish,” was, in Chioldi’s own words, “kind of poor.” His father was a steelworker and owned a produce business. In the summer, all the kids had to pitch in—a job Chioldi hated. “It was a horrible summer job,” he remembers. “We had to get up at four, go to Pittsburgh to get produce, come back, unload the trucks, load smaller trucks, and drive to roadside locations.” That, he said, was when he knew he wanted to go to college.
His mother made the family’s clothing. “I never realized how poor we were—we had the best produce and food, my mom was a great cook, we had good shoes and music lessons, and there was all this culture.” He and his two siblings took piano and guitar lessons. His brother and sister also studied accordion, but Chioldi rebelled—“I didn’t want to be that typical Italian kid.”
His grandfather listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast, and both sides of the family sang. “On one side I had polkas, the other side opera!” Chioldi recalls. “We sang all the time. We sang at parties, in the car . . . we always sang growing up. My father had a really good voice—he was a tenor. My mother loves to sing too! Singing was a family cultural thing—everyone sang in the church choir and at family gatherings. I’m a loud and boisterous personality—well, that’s my whole family. I have 19 first cousins on my mother’s side, and on my dad’s side it was the same thing. So when we all got together for Christmas, it was amazing.”
Despite his musical background, Chioldi didn’t initially consider opera. His professional aspirations hovered between medicine and acting. He sang in his high school jazz rock choir, was the assistant conductor, and was voted “Most Musically Inclined” of his senior class. And he realized that music scholarships could help pay for his college education—as indeed they did.
He auditioned for West Virginia University and was accepted, but even after he was offered his first role—Sam in Trouble in Tahiti—he didn’t take it seriously. “I was too busy,” he recalls. “I turned it down.” A week later when the singer who had been cast had to leave for a family emergency, Chioldi was offered the role again. This time, he accepted.
“I remember the first rehearsal, sitting at the table thinking, ‘I could do this for a living.’ I felt more alive than I had ever felt. It was the big ‘Aha!’ moment,” he says.
Chioldi’s teacher, Robert Taylor, recorded a lesson and sent the tape to colleagues at major universities across the country. “I walked in one day and he had four scholarship letters for me. He was a real teacher. He was selfless in the best possible way. It was never about him—he could have kept me there, but he knew I could excel in a bigger place.”
As it happened, Chioldi didn’t accept any of those invitations. Doris Yarick-Cross invited him to audition for Yale. “Being a country bumpkin, when I was done, I said, ‘Well, what did you think?’” Chioldi laughs. He attended Yale for two years, studying with Doris and Richard Cross and frequently working with Sherrill Milnes, who was a visiting artist. “I think that’s where I really fell in love with opera,” he says. He had many performing opportunities—Count Almaviva, Papageno, a role in the American premiere of Il viaggio a Reims. In his second year, Houston Grand Opera came calling.
“My story is one of those I almost hate to tell. The business was different then,” he shrugs. “There were only four big YAPs when I came up—the Met, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston.” Gayletha Nichols flew him to Houston and promised to “personally take care of me—and she really did.” Chioldi spent two years in the Houston program. In his second year, he won several competitions, including the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The next year, he was accepted into the Santa Fe Opera and the Merola Program.
“He was a light baritone, young, slim, and handsome guy, good presence, very musical, and hungry and eager to sing and to be onstage,” remembers Christina Scheppelmann, then artistic administrator at San Francisco Opera, now the general director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, where Chioldi will be singing Andrea Chénier in 2018. “He kept working diligently, developed really good stage and acting skills. His voice with time solidified and grew, and he never stopped working on his voice, his technique, his Italian, phrasing, legato, interpretation, and expanding intelligently his rep. He let his voice grow without forcing or pushing it. That takes patience, determination, and lots of work. He is grounded, smart, hardworking, and a nice guy, not pretentious at all, a good colleague.”
Clearly Chioldi made a good impression. At age 25, he made his debut at Washington National Opera in the title role of The Barber of Seville, where Scheppelmann had become director of artistic operations. He gave 14 performances.
And that was where the Met heard him.
They offered him the role of a guard in Manon and the cover of Fléville in Andrea Chénier in a grand new production which was to open the season, starring Aprile Millo, Luciano Pavarotti, Juan Pons, Rosalind Elias, Wendy White, and James Levine. On opening night, the singer in the role of Fléville got sick and Chioldi, with three hours’ notice, was called to go on. “I got offered four contracts for the following season,” Chioldi recalls. “It was all small stuff, but it was great. I was happy to do it—Marullo, Morales, Yamadori, and Fiorello.”
He went on to sing three more seasons and 10 roles with the Met and loved his time there. “I learned how much work went into creating a role and how detailed even one line of text can be. That it is essential to have a point of view when singing and creating a role, but also to be open to new and differing directions and ideas.”
But, eventually, Chioldi felt that he needed to develop his craft more thoroughly before he was ready to take on bigger roles in such a high-profile environment. At age 28, he began to seek opportunities for leading roles on the regional level.
He didn’t have to go far to find them. Just across the plaza was the New York City Opera, famous for providing a proving ground for up-and-coming American talent.
“In 1999, I sang my debut at New York City Opera, L’enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole,” Chioldi recalls. “And that led to 12 consecutive years and over 150 performances.” He was a company mainstay, performing roles such as Papageno, Count Almaviva, Don Giovanni, Belcore, Enrico, and Escamillo. “I was known as the Bel Canto baritone when I was there—anything that came up in the Bel Canto or French repertoire came to me.”
After NYCO’s closing in 2008, Chioldi began to sing on the broader regional circuit in companies like Utah Festival Opera, Austin Opera, and Palm Beach Opera, as well as in France, Spain, Germany, and South America. It was during these years that he began to transition to dramatic baritone repertoire, and he attributes his current abilities to guidance from his voice teacher Michael Paul, his former agent Robert Lombardo, and to singing lyrically for so many years.
“I feel I’m in the prime of my vocal career and prowess,” he says. “I still have the extension on the top. I have many more colors now as I’ve gotten a little bit older. And you need that for the more sinister characters because they’re more complex.” Scarpia is a current signature role. Most recently, Chioldi dominated reviews for his performances in the grand opening of NYCO Renaissance’s Tosca, as well as in Utah Opera’s production.
In 2013, the Verdi bicentennial year, Chioldi debuted five Verdi roles. “Macbeth has been my calling card,” he says. Later this season, he’ll sing it in New Orleans and has his first Iago in Guadalajara, as well as Rigoletto with Palm Beach Opera and Sharpless with Austin Opera. He dabbles in Wagner, having sung several Dutchmans, and is starting to sing some of the big Strauss, such as Jochanaan in Salome. Now a client of Jeffrey Vanderveen and Aaron Grant of Opus 3 Artists, who manage artists like tenors Paul Groves and Bryan Hymel, Chioldi is booked through 2019. “I’ve found my niche,” he says.
Although he regularly sings at A houses, he has never considered himself the go-to baritone at the A-house level, which he attributes to his temperament. “I would rather sing a big role in a regional house than cover a big role in a big house. I didn’t do very well sitting around and not getting to create. But I hope I’ve learned something from my experience.”
One thing he learned, Chioldi says, is the importance of being supportive of other singers. At this stage in his career, he is frequently called upon to teach and give masterclasses. He maintains a studio of singers at the young artist level, many of whom met him through his singing work at Chautauqua Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival or through Young Artist Programs at other companies where he sings. He also served as an artist in residence at Chautauqua and stayed on to teach.
“In masterclasses, I always try to stress being a really good colleague because it’s hard what we do, and you never know where someone is coming from,” he says. “I think when I was young I never really considered any of that.”
He says that, as a teacher, he wants to encourage young professionals to just get out and sing. He cautions them against getting caught in what he calls “the never-ending loop of Young Artist Programs.” “They’re all really afraid!” he says. “They’re 25–28 years old, they’ve all been through these major programs, and they ask what to do next . . . I say get a manager, get a job, and start working! When I was growing up in the business, they put you out on the stage right away.” Depending on what a YAP is offering, Chioldi might counsel his students to stay in New York, taking voice and acting classes, working on their craft, and taking auditions.
“You’re in a Young Artist Program at Houston, you’re 23 years old, and singing Yamadori with major artists. You watch them and you learn about the business—how to behave, how to sing, how much it takes to sustain a Butterfly or a Rigoletto. I remember going to lunch with Jimmy Morris to ask him for advice about singing my first Dutchman. He asked me how many performances I had—14. He said, ‘Well, at the end of those 14 performances, you’ll know whether you can sing it or not.’ That’s how it is—you cut your teeth on the stage.”
Chioldi certainly cut his teeth on the stage, and a very big one at that. He has no regrets. “My journey in the business has been one of ups and downs, and a career’s about longevity. I really hope to be singing 20 years from now. I hope I still have a point of view and something artistic to say. What we do in opera is central to the fabric of society. We can change people’s perspectives and how they feel. The human voice is so powerful, the resonance is universal—and when you do touch an audience or a person in that way, there is nothing better in the world, to receive all that love after you’ve given it.”
Chioldi experienced that love firsthand during his recent Pagliacci at Virginia Opera. “To my recollection, the audience’s roaring ovation following Michael Chioldi’s performance of ‘Si può’ in our opening performance of Pagliacci is unparalleled in Virginia Opera’s recent history,” Artistic Advisor Adam Turner recalls. “The thunderous and long-sustained applause for Michael was truly remarkable, mesmerizing the audience and setting the tone for the rest of the evening’s performance of grand operatic singing.” One opera-goer was so excited by Chioldi’s performance that he gave him a standing ovation after the aria.
What does the future have in store for an artist who can inspire such a response? Chioldi would like to do more Wagner, “but I’ve been holding off,” he says. “There’s some thought that once you go into Wagner it’s hard to turn back to Verdi. But it certainly is a dream of mine to sing Wotan someday, as well as Wozzeck and some of the heavier German repertoire.”
On a more personal note, the near future also holds a wedding, and Chioldi couldn’t be more excited. Anyone who knows him knows all about his “boo,” New York realtor Scott Hill. Invitations to a home-cooked meal at Rooftini’s, the couple’s apartment, are much sought after. They have a rule: no more than three weeks apart. Chioldi’s social media accounts triumphantly announce each time Hill joins him on location.
“We met at Washington National Opera during a production of Butterfly. He was an ASM and I was Sharpless,” he says. “I knew when I saw him that he was the love of my life and that we were destined to be together.” Chioldi’s baritonal craftiness served him well in his pursuit of Hill. “I asked him on a first date by mentioning that a bunch of us should go out at some point . . . to which he agreed, and then I never asked anyone else. Mwahaha.” The couple plans to marry at Trinity Church in December.
He feels, Chioldi says, blessed to do the work he loves. “I feel like I’m in the middle of my story.” He pauses. “It hasn’t been written yet. But I’m very happy with where I am right now. I do still follow my heart.”
