Cecilia Duarte
Soloist in the Grammy Winning album Duruflé: The Complete Choral Works. Praised by The New York Times as "A creamy voiced mezzo-soprano," Mexican born, Cecilia is a versatile singer that has performed around the world singing different music styles, from early music to contemporary music and jazz.
Cecilia has been greatly recognized for creating the role of Renata in the first Mariachi Opera Cruzar la Cara de la Luna with the famous Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera in 2010. Cecilia has taken this opera to stages such as the Houston Grand Opera, Châtelet Theatre in Paris, France; Chicago Lyric Opera, San Diego Opera, Arizona Opera, The Fort Worth Opera, Teatro Nacional Sucre, in Quito, Ecuador, New York City Opera, and El Paso Opera. Since then, Cecilia has created other roles for world premieres of chamber operas and new works, such as Jessie Lydell in A Coffin in Egypt, (HGO and the Wallis Annenberg Center in L.A.); Gracie in A Way Home (HGO and Opera Southwest); Harriet/First Responder in After the Storm (HGO); Alicia in Some Light Emerges (HGO); Alma in Houston Grand Opera’s first web opera series Star-cross’d, and more recently Renata in El Milagro del Recuerdo with HGO.
Operatic roles include Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Loma Williams in Cold Sassy Tree, Isabella in Rapaccini’s Daughter, Sarelda in The Inspector, Tituba in The Crucible, and Maria in Maria de Buenos Aires, a mong others.
Cecilia is active in early music, being a seasoned artist with Ars Lyrica Houston, Mercury Houston, The Bach Society Houston, and performed at the Fesitvalensemble in Stuttgart, Germany, and the Festival de Música Barroca de San Miguel de Allende, México. More recently, she joined Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, performing early and contemporary music.
Recordings include Soloist in the Grammy Winner album Duruflé: The Complete Choral Works with Signum Records; Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, with Albany
Records, NY; a special appearance in Encantamiento, a n album with music by Daniel Catán, and coming up, her first solo album Reencuentros, an album of Latin American songs.