Bio

Bass-baritone PAUL HOUGHTALING has enjoyed success over a 40-year career in a variety of stage roles, as well as concert repertoire ranging from works of Bach and Handel to Cage and Crumb, and has delighted audiences across the United States and Europe with his innate theatricality and distinctive style. Career highlights include European tours as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte with Teatro Lirico d’Europa (“…an extraordinary Papageno of comic sensitivity, naivete and tenderness, served by a superb voice and a remarkable physical agility.” Salon de Provence); a debut with the Bard Music Festival and the American Symphony Orchestra in Haydn’s L’Infedeltá Delusa (“…revealed a striking and flexible baritone.” Opera News); Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King with ALEA III in Boston (“…singing forcefully, in eerie falsetto highs and chesty baritonal lows … the Davies sent you home stunned.” The Boston Globe); Mozart’s Requiem and Bach’s Magnificat and Christmas Oratorio with the Cecilia Chorus of New York at Carnegie Hall; works of Bach with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Bach Cantatas in Context” Series, American Classical Orchestra, Amor Artis Baroque Orchestra, and others; United States tours with the Waverly Consort, including Kennedy Center appearances; “Opera Buffa: Comedy On Stage” on Lincoln Center’s “Meet the Artists” series; and his acclaimed Gilbert & Sullivan interpretations with the Anchorage, Cedar Rapids, Knoxville, Saratoga, Mississippi, Nashville, Natchez, and Central City Operas, among other opera companies and orchestras throughout the United States.

Houghtaling was a frequent studio artist with Philip Glass and Looking Glass Studios and can be heard as a featured vocalist on Glass’s soundtrack to Reggio’s film Naqoyqatsi on the SONY label, and as the Laughing Sun and the Ogre in the Glass/Beni Montresor collaboration, The Witches of Venice, recorded for Euphorbia. He frequently toured and soloed with Alice Parker and Melodious Accord in a variety of American repertoire and performed with that ensemble in a still-popular 1992 episode of Prairie Home Companion.

In 2022, he sang Angelotti in Puccini’s Tosca with Mobile Opera, Druid City Opera, and Opera Las Vegas. In 2023 he made his debut with Marble City Opera in Knoxville, Tennessee as Elder McLean in Susannah. 2024 included Benoit and Alcindoro with First Coast Opera and Opera Las Vegas and he made his debut with Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis as Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady in 2025. Other notable opera engagements include L'Opera Francais de New York (Arcas, Iphigénie en Aulide), Opera Birmingham (Dulcamara), Tacoma Opera (Don Pasquale), Baltimore Opera (young people's opera tours), Des Moines Metro Opera (Hoiby's The Tempest), Metropolitan Opera Guild (Marco in Gianni Schicchi), Abilene Opera (Colline), Opera East Texas (Njegus), and Boston Lyric Opera (Mad Hatter).

Houghtaling has sung most of the masterworks of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Gounod, Fauré, Duruflé, Elgar, Copland, Stravinsky, and more. He has appeared with Manhattan Concert Productions in Carnegie Hall, Mark Morris Dance Company, Boston Baroque, New York Philharmonic, Alabama Symphony, Tuscaloosa Symphony, Miami Bach Society, BachWorks in New York, Boston Early Music Festival, Clarion Music, Folger Consort, Bach Aria Festival, Helena Symphony, and others. The New York Times put his staged Dichterliebe in the same favorable light as similar projects by Andreas Scholl and Simon Keenlyside by saying, “… a growing number of [singers] — including Simon Keenlyside…and Paul Houghtaling, in appropriately madcap stagings of Schumann cycles, have been livening up their acts.”

Earning considerable attention for his work in contemporary music, especially for his performances of Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, Mr. Houghtaling has performed with Gunther Schuller, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, and ALEA III, both in the U.S. and on the Kalamata and Iraklion Festivals in Greece in new theater works for Greek National Television. He appeared with the American Composers Orchestra on its “Sonidos de las Americas” Festival in Weill Hall at Carnegie, and later with the Brooklyn Philharmonic on its Virgil Thomson Centenary. Other notable projects include John Cage’s Apartment House 1776 during the composer’s Norton Lectures at Harvard, George Crumb’s Songs, Drones & Refrains of Death with ALEA III in Boston, and Davies’ Le Jongleur de Notre Dame with the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, also in Boston (“Paul Houghtaling has personality and a splendid voice.” The Boston Globe). In addition to works by Philip Glass, Mr. Houghtaling has created roles in numerous new theater and opera works.

Dr. Houghtaling holds degrees from the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA (B.A.), the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston (B.M.), Hunter College in New York City (M.A.), and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (D.M.A.).  He is currently Professor and Co-Coordinator of Voice and Director of Opera Theatre at the University of Alabama where he leads a nationally recognized opera training program.