David Ronis
David Ronis maintains an active schedule in a multi-faceted career. Currently on the music faculties of the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College/CUNY, and Hofstra University, he is a sought-after opera director. His 2009 and 2011 productions of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and Argento’s Postcard From Morocco won first and third place, respectively, in the National Opera Association Opera Production Competition. Other recent productions include Suor Angelica, La Damoiselle Elue, The Magic Flute, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Dido and Aeneas at Queens College, Rigoletto for the Queens Symphony Orchestra, Così fan tutte for OSH Opera, and a portion of Gregg Wramage’s Death in Summer at Manhattan School of Music, part of their annual “From Page to Stage” series. Mr. Ronis is also the co-director of the Baroque Opera Workshop at Queens College as well as a faculty member at the Westchester Summer Vocal Institute. In 2012 season, he will guest direct From Berlin to Potsdam – A Kurt Weill Cabaret at the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam.
A specialist in teaching integrative acting and movement techniques for singers, Mr. Ronis is a frequent master class teacher and clinician. He has recently given master classes and workshops at Manhattan School of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory, the Seagle Colony, Opera New Jersey, Vassar College, Texas Christian University, University of Dayton, and the Southern Louisiana Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. He also maintains a private voice and coaching studio in New York City.
Mr. Ronis has sung over 50 character tenor operatic roles with more than 30 companies in Europe and Asia, and the U.S. Highlights of his opera career include performances of the Witch in Hansel and Gretel, the Four Servants in Les Contes D’Hoffmann, Prince Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus, Basilio and Curzio in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Goro in Madama Butterfly, with opera companies in Nice, Hong Kong, Atlanta, Tulsa, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Houston, Louisville, Columbus, Tampa, Rochester, Grand Rapids, and the New York City Opera National Company, among others (see Résume). He also performed in Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place/Trouble in Tahiti at La Scala Milan and the Vienna State Opera, with the composer conducting.
In concert, Mr. Ronis has appeared as soloist at New York’s Carnegie, Avery Fisher, and Alice Tully Halls, with L’Opéra Français de New York, with the Musica Sacra Chorus in a Kurt Weill Festival, and with Hermann Prey in the Schubertiade series at the 92nd Street Y. Other concert credits include performances with the Milwaukee and New Haven Symphonies, the Aspen Music Festival, and at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy and Charleston, South Carolina. He has been the cantorial soloist for the High Holy Days at Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, Michigan since 1987.
A member of Actors’ Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild, Mr. Ronis has performed in both musical and spoken theater productions in New York City, Los Angeles, and throughout the U.S. In 1995, he made his musical theater debut in the Los Angeles production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. He continued in the show’s subsequent national tour, playing the roles of Monsieur D’Arque and Lumiere, the candlestick. On camera, he has appeared in independent and industrial films and been featured in nationally televised commercials and print advertisements.
Mr. Ronis received his B.F.A. degree from Purchase College of the State University of New York and the M.A.L.S. (Master of Arts in Liberal Studies) in Opera Studies, an interdisciplinary research degree, from Empire State College/SUNY. He also studied at the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, France, then under the direction of the legendary teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Additionally he received the Anthony Gishford Award to attend the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England, where he worked with the late Sir Peter Pears.
