Performer » Biography

The versatile soprano Bonnie Pomfret has performed music from the 12th to the 21st centuries in seven languages. As a soloist, she has performed in locations around the United States, as well as in Germany, France, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Hungary, Spain, and China. In a performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre, Act III, with Donald Runnicles conducting the Atlanta Symphony , the Atlanta Constitution  reported “Soprano Bonnie Pomfret, as Ortlinde, ...stood out for strength of voice...and graceful phrasing.” Classical Voice NC described her in a 2002 recital as having "true power, control, and acting ability.”

A native of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Pomfret sang entire songs before speaking in sentences. She began piano studies at age seven and received degrees in piano and voice from the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany.  Her master’s degree is in voice from the Boston Conservatory, and her doctorate in vocal performance from Indiana University, where she was a student of Virginia Zeani, leading soprano of La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera.  She was a Rotary International Fellow in Florence and Berlin, and a 1994 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Wagner-Festspiele in Bayreuth, Germany, researching staging techniques in the Ring cycle.

Dr. Pomfret was associate professor from 1986-97 at Illinois State University, where she taught voice and produced and directed operas and musicals, including Cosi fan tutte, The Consul, The Merry Widow, Gianni Schicchi, The Impresario, The Old Maid and the Thief, A little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, the Sound of Music, and the Pirates of Penzance.   She served for seven years as director of vocal studies at Emory University, and maintains a private studio of advanced singers.  Having completed her master’s with David Blair McClosky, a pioneer in vocal rehabilitation, she is known nationally for her clinics on vocal health for singers and non-singers, and her curricular design and teaching for the McClosky Institute’s summer courses around the U.S.

Recent performing activities include two lecture-recitals in Spain in June 2005, and the release in October 2005 of De toda la eternidad, a compact disc of songs by American women on the ACA Digital label. Pomfret lives in Atlanta.