Zachary Stains

Returns to Arosa fresh from work on an exciting CD of 120 Never-Before-Recorded Victor Herbert songs, due to be released in March.  On it you will hear him and an all-star cast singing songs not heard for over a century: Rebecca Luker, Ron Raines, Aaron Lazar, Margaret Jane Wray, Marnie Breckenridge, Korliss Uecker, Jeanne Lehman, pianist/conductor William Hicks and others. Previous recordings include his singing the villainous murderer Tiridate on the award-winning Virgin Classics CD of Handel’s Radamisto, alongside Joyce DiDonato, under the direction of Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco.  He can be seen and heard as Hercules on the Dynamic DVD of Vivaldi’s Ercole Sul Termodonte from the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy where his costume, stage acumen, and expressive singing caught the attention of many on both sides of the pond…  Also on Dynamic DVD from Spoleto he is featured as Lurcanio with Anne Hallenenberg singing the title role in Handel’s Ariodante.  He has performed at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria and appears on the Virgin Classics DVD of the European and American tour of that production, and has sung at major festivals and opera houses in Europe and the U.S.  When the New York Times finally caught up with him recently, folding socks at his neighborhood laundry on the Upper East Side, they asked: “to which hidden, out of the way, night-spot do you go most often for a relaxing cocktail, excellent food, great entertainment, and some relief from the constant attention of your fans and the press?” his unhesitating response was,  “To the Tschuggen my boy.  To the Tschuggen Grand!”.