Melissa Attebury, mezzo-soprano, has performed numerous operatic and musical theatre roles including the title role in Carmen, Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte), Lelia (Iolanthe), Blanche (Dialogues of the Carmelites), Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Phoebe (Yeomen of the Guard), Stephano (Romeo et Juliette), Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus), Giovanna (Rigoletto) and Nellie (South Pacific).  A specialist in the operetta’s of Gilbert and Sullivan, she has been hailed as “appealing both vocally and comedically” (Kansas City Star) for her work in this genre.   She has performed the role of Melissa (Princess Ida), Pitti-Sing (Mikado) and Kate (Pirates of Penzance) at City Center, The New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and Wolf Trap with the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players. 

Solo concert engagements include Handel’s Messiah, the Vivaldi Gloria, Haydn Lord Nelson Mass, Haydn Mass in Time of War, Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Missa Brevis in G Major and Missa Brevis in A, Missa Brevis in G Minor, Mozart’s Requiem and Coronation Mass, and the Monteverdi Vespers.  She was a soloist in the world premiere of Robert Levin’s completed edition of Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, performed on historical instruments and broadcast live on WQXR. Ms. Attebury has sung with several chamber and choral groups in the New York area, including the Manhattan Voices, Tiffany Consort, New York Canticum Novum Singers, New York Virtuoso Singers,The Brearley Singers, Musica Sacra, Westchester Oratorio Society, and the Clarion Music Society.  She was a District winner in the 2001 Metropolitan Opera Competition, and the recipient of an artistic grant from the Kansas Cultural Trust. She recorded On a Seasonal Note for the American Lupus Foundation/ Crane Records and was featured as the mezzo soloist in “A Joyous Christmas Concert with Sylvia McNair”.  In the summer of 2004 she sang in the IBLA Grand Prize competition in Ragusa-Ibla, Sicily, where she received an honorable mention for her work.

Most recently she performed in Handel's Messiah with Jane Glover and Bach's St. John Passion with Andrew Parrott, both at Trinity Wall Street.  Other recent performances include  Rachmaninoff's Vespers, Bach’s B Minor Mass (Trinity Wall Street), and  Rosalia (West Side Story Concert Suites) with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, her Avery FIsher Hall debut (Cherubino in Mozart's Vienna).  Suring the summer of 2010, she will be seen as Pitti-Sing (Dayton Opera), in the premiere of Cinema Songs with Empire Opera in NYC, and will be on the performance faculty of the Berkshire Choral Festival.  This fall will include performances of Mikado, Israel in Egypt, and the Bach Weihnachts Oratorium.