Christopher Sokolowski remembers watching his father perform on stage, playing roles in The Magic Flute and Die Fladermaus, operas which he's now performed in himself. In fact, both of his parents were opera singers - Chris stood little chance of doing anything else.
Originally from Hudson Valley, NY, Sokolowski completed all of his formal training in the United States. He received his B.M. from the Purchase Conservatory in New York, and his M.M. from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Just a few years after completing his masters, Sokolowski moved to Europe, where he began his formal career, performing in Frankfurt, the Netherlands, Paris and a splattering of other cities across Europe and Asia.
This year, Sokolowski performed in Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges during the Des Moines Metro Opera's 2023 season.
"This performance in Des Moines is my US debut, even though I'm from the US, and I've been singing for a good number of years now," Sokolowski chuckled.
Sokolowski is a heldentenor, or heroic tenor, in English. He says his voice is ideal for power and drama, and he gravitates toward more heroic roles. When he was in his 20s, Sokolowski said he was a much more lyrical singer, filled with more vocal warmth. But he says that all changes once you hit 30.
"As every professional tenor will say when you turn 30, 'your throat feels different,' and I had to basically confront myself and confront my repertoire and say 'what should I be singing?' and this past year I've started performing some of the heroic roles."
Sokolowski says this means more Wagner, Verdi, and of course, playing The Prince.
In The Love for Three Oranges, Sokolowski plays The Prince, who is riddled with hypochondria. Sokolowski says Prokofiev has a descriptive approach to composition, allowing the audience to understand what’s happening in the opera through the music, which is different from many composers at the time.
"Well, luckily Prokofiev is so zany in how he writes the music. The music just does it all for you. In the first two pages I go from heroic singing to baroque ornamentation to trills... the music is written in such a way that you don't really have to do much more than sing what's on the page," says Sokolowski.
Sokolowski is scheduled to perform in Verdi's Ernani and Rossini's Guillaume Tell in Switzerland next year.
