Bio

Bass-baritone PAUL HOUGHTALING has enjoyed success 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, commanding presence, 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 Alicindoro with First Coast Opera and Opera Las Vegas and he will debut with Opera Huntsville in the title role of Don Pasquale in 2025.

The 2016-2017 season included a return to Ko-Ko in The Mikado with Mississippi Opera, and his role debut as Dulcamara in L’elisir d’Amore with Opera Birmingham on which Arts Birmingham reported: “Houghtaling was an impossible-to-ignore Dulcamara. Stealing the night … he gave more depth to the character than one could expect.  His voice was commanding and communicative, his patter articulate … ‘Udite, udite, o rustici’ was a tour de force.”  The 2018-2019 season included a Gilbert & Sullivan review for Opera Mississippi, and the Key Note Address at the West Central NOA Regional Conference. The 2019-2020 season included two world premieres: the role of Mr. Murphee in the Landers in October of 2019, in collaboration with the UA Opera Theatre and the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra; and Professor Henry in Michael Ching’s RSBE: Remove Shoes Before Entering, also with the UA Opera Theatre.

Other engagements include Handel’s Judas Maccabeus with Amor Artis Baroque Orchestra under Johannes Somary, Ko-Ko in The Mikado in his debut with the Opera Saratoga at Saratoga Springs, New York, (“It was a total, integrated performance — part Harold Lloyd, part patter-singer extraordinaire, all scintillating.” The Record, Troy, NY), the Sacristan in Tosca with New York’s Prism Opera Showcase, the Major General in The Pirates of Penzance with Florida’s Gulf Coast Symphony, Bach’s B-Minor Mass with Miami Bach Society, and the Fauré Requiem with Manhattan Concert Productions at Carnegie Hall. In the spring of 2005, 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.”

Other notable opera and operetta engagements include highly lauded performances with the Central City Opera as the comic lead in Friml’s Rose-Marie (“…manages to make his small frame look ludicrous in any costume — not a problem, but an asset for this show stealer.” Rocky Mountain News), the title role in Don Pasquale for Tacoma Opera, the Major General with the Knoxville (“…his tour-de-force performance grabbed the audience from the opening note.” Knoxville News-Sentinel), Anchorage and Central City Operas and Gilbert & Sullivan pops concerts with the Johnstown Symphony, and the Abilene and Erie Philharmonics. He has also appeared with the Boston Lyric, Baltimore, Des Moines, First Coast, Long Beach Civic Light, and The Santa Fe Operas, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Opera East Texas and L’Opera Francais de New York under Yves Abel, among others.

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. In 1994, he appeared with the American Composers Orchestra on its “Sonidos de las Americas” Festival in Weill Hall at Carnegie, and in 1996 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic on its Virgil Thomson Centenary. Other notable projects include John Cage’s Apartment House 1776 during the composer’s 1988 Norton Lectures at Harvard, George Crumb’s Songs, Drones & Refrains of Death with ALEA III, and Davies’ Le Jongleur de Notre Dame with the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble 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 including Lee Hoiby’s The Tempest with Des Moines Metro Opera and the title role in William Harper’s El Greco for the Off-Broadway Intar Theater. He can also be heard as soloist on two recordings for New World Records’ Recorded Anthology of American Music series: cantatas of Robert Beaser on Divine Grandeur, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Romancero Gitano” on The Mask, both with New York Concert Singers under Judith Clurman.

Paul Houghtaling has appeared with the Boston Early Music Festival, Clarion Music, Early Music New York (U.S. tours), the Waverly Consort (“Paul Houghtaling’s rich-hued bass-baritone and commanding delivery did stand out.” Kansas City Star), and the Mark Morris Dance Company production of Dido & Aeneas. Additional engagements include debuts with the Folger Consort in Washington in programs of Spanish Renaissance music, the Billings Symphony in Messiah under Uri Barnea, the New York Chamber Symphony under Martin Turnovsky, and the Helena Symphony in Montana in a staged performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Mr. Houghtaling has performed more than 70 Bach Cantatas and other baroque works with such ensembles as the Bach Societies of Miami and Worcester (“[Houghtaling’s] vocal presence was rich, dark and stoic … deeply sensitive.” Sentinel-Enterprise, Worcester), American Classical Orchestra, Boston Baroque, New York’s BachWorks at Merkin Hall, the Bach Aria Festival and Institute and the renowned Holy Trinity Bach Foundation series, also in New York.

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.). In the fall of 2007, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama where he is currently Professor and Co-Coordinator of Voice and Director of Opera Theatre. He has also served on the faculties of Hunter College and Highbridge Voices in New York.