Alta Boover

Dr. Alta Boover, mezzo-soprano, 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). She has extensive post-doctoral training in contemporary singing styles, and in the biomechanics and habilitation of the singing and speaking voice. Her students have performed in concert halls, opera houses, and entertainment venues around the world, on Broadway, and on National Broadway Tours. Many have earned regional and national recognition for top placement in competitions through the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and the American Collegiate Theatre Festival, as well as televised singing competitions. Dr. Boover is an Associate Professor of Voice at Oakland University and teaches Lyric Diction and Business Essentials for Musicians.

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). In New York, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall as a soloist in Mozart’s Solemn Vespers and Haydn’s Creation, and 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. On the operatic stage, favorite roles include Julia Child in Bon Appétit!, Marcellina in Il Nozze di Figaro, Prince Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus, Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance, Berta in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Katisha in The Mikado, and Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, with companies including Opera Carolina, Toledo Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Austin Lyric Opera, Shreveport Opera, and Des Moines Metro Opera.

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 Songs of a Wayfarer, 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 Nunes 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 Billitis at the International Congress on Claude Debussy in Austin Texas. She presents and performs American Operetta across the U.S., and shared that presentation in the home of Operetta- — Vienna, Austria — at the 10th  International Congress of Voice Teachers in 2022.

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 L.A. composer Sara Carina Graef. With her colleague Tian Tian, she recorded both pieces and their album, Life and Love, 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.

Her album, Of Time and Love, with John Alexander Madison, viola and Mary Siciliano, piano, will be released in 2023 by Centaur Records. Along with music by Charles Loeffler and Johannes Brahms, it features musical settings of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 63-66 by French composer Nicolas Bacri.