Dramatic mezzo-soprano Kathryn Allyn is critically acclaimed in both tragedy and comedy, in contemporary and standard operatic repertoire. Called a “vocally lustrous earful” by the Philadelphia Enquirer, her most recent appearances include  the title role in Carmen at Florida Grand Opera and two twentieth-century works at the New York City Opera,  Die Tote Stadt (Brigitte) and Richard Rodney Bennet’s The Mines of Sulphur (Rosalind). Her 2002 New York City Opera debut as Aloes in Chabrier’s feather-light L’Etoile was described as “Stylishly sung, grandly libidinous,” by Opera News. Other assignments with the company have included turns in Madama Butterfly (Suzuki) and Handel’s Flavio (Teodata), as well as covering leading roles in new productions of Semele and Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleu.  A highlight at NYCO was creating the leading role of Princess Batcheat (“the most difficult task of the day,” according to the New York Sun) in Charles Wuorinen’s and Salman Rusdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. 

Ms. Allyn’s Palm Beach Opera debut in Les Contes d’Hoffmann under the baton of Julius Rudel, was hailed as “note perfect” and “the most satisfying performance of the night” by the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. With Bard College’s SummerScape Festival, she created the role of Olga in their premiere of The Guest From The Future, Jonathan Levi’s story of Russia’s Silver Age poetess, Anna Akhmatova, in the days following the 1917 Revolution. The New Jersey Classical Society Journal noted that, in her appearance in New Jersey performances of La Donna del Lago with Opera Orchestra New York, she “knocked off another amazing vocal feat…every time she came onstage”.

Before moving into the heavier repertoire she enjoys today, Ms. Allyn developed her sense of comedy in two seasons at the Ohio Light Opera, in various roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon and the great operetta of Europe, appearing in The Mikado, TheGondoliers and others, along with Strauss’ Wienerblut, Zeller’s Die Vogelhandler, Kálmán’s The Gypsy Princess, Offenbach’s Les Brigands, Coward’s Bittersweet, and Villa-Lobos’ Magdalena. She went on to appear in such roles as Cuniza (Verdi’s Oberto), Prince Orlovsky, Marcellina, Rosina, Siebel, Ariodante, Hansel, Suzy (La Rondine) Flora Bevoix, Stephano, and Ado Annie Carnes, with The Florentine Opera, The Virginia Opera Association, Syracuse Opera, El Paso Opera, Arizona Opera, New York Chamber Opera, Opera Theater Northern Virginia, Boheme Opera of New Jersey, Cleveland Opera, Sarasota Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, and Opera Theater Northern Virginia.

In concert repertoire, Kathryn has been heard with the Tokyo New City Symphony as Alto Soloist in Mahler’s Symphony Nr. 2, and made her Carnegie Hall debut as Alto Soloist in Mozart’s Requiem. At a benefit to aid survivors of the 2005 earthquake in Southeast Asia, Kathryn joined musicians from the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra and others, to perform as Alto Soloist at Carnegie Hall in Beethoven’s Symphony Nr. 9. With the Diocese of Rockville Center, Long Island, Kathryn performed with Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera artists to benefit the effort to rebuild Southeast Asia after the tsunami of 2004. At New York City’s Weill Hall, she performed with the Verdi Society and Opera Orchestra of New York, in a concert devoted to the arias and ensembles of Verdi, and returned to Carnegie Hall to perform as Alto Soloist in Handel’s Messiah and Vivaldi’s Gloria, and to Opera Orchestra of New York, covering the role of Smeton in Anna Bolena and La Cieca in La Gioconda.

A graduate of The University of Kansas (B.M. 1991) and The Wichita State University (M.M. 1993), Ms. Allyn is a 1997 winner of The McAllister Awards (Third Prize, Professional Division), the Birmingham Opera Theater Awards (Third Prize) and was a 2000 Finalist in the Chicago Lyric Opera’s LOCAA Competition. A student of Catherine Green, Kansas native Kathryn Allyn makes her home in a menagerie that includes two ferrets, two cats and one Tenor, in New York City.