Baritone Philip Lima has sung leading operatic roles for the international Kurt Weill Festival in Germany, numerous regional American opera companies, and the Handel & Haydn Society in works ranging from Handel’s Semele and Mozart’s Così fan tutte to Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca, to Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Barber’s Vanessa, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic classics The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. Of note have been his featured roles in the World Premieres of operas by jazz greats Leslie Burrs, Nathan Davis, and Mary Watkins and award-winning composer Larry Bell.
Mr. Lima has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops and over sixty orchestras, choral societies, and concert series across the United States, Korea, and Ukraine, singing major works such as Bach’s St. John Passion and Ich habe genug, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mass in C, Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles and Mass (major excerpts), the Requiems of both Brahms and Fauré, Dave Brubeck’s The Light in the Wilderness, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Mendelssohn’s Grosse Festmusik zum Dürerfest (U.S. premiere), Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, and the major choral works of Vaughan Williams. He has performed Lee Hoiby’s setting of the “I Have a Dream” speech of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with numerous orchestras, including the Boston Pops.
A native of New Bedford, Massachusetts and an alumnus of Yale University, Mr. Lima studied at the Tanglewood Music Center and Boston University with Phyllis Curtin and Richard Conrad. He is Conrad’s successor as the artistic director of The Bostonians, an opera and concert ensemble. More information about Mr. Lima is available at PhilipLima.com and his YouTube channel, PhilipLimaSings.