Opera singer and LAHS alumna Rebecca Ringle Kamarei. Courtesy photo

NEWS RELEASE

Opera singer and 1998 LAHS graduate Rebecca Ringle Kamarei will perform as Alto Soloist in Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony with the New Mexico Philharmonic at Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque on Feb. 17.  

Ringle Kamarei, a former student of Los Alamos musicians Candace Magner and Joe Cox, has performed with orchestras, festivals, and opera companies around the world. For fourteen consecutive seasons, she was a soloist at the Metropolitan Opera, with performances including Wagner’s Die Walküre, Nico Muhly’s Marnie, and Kevin Puts’ The Hours. She has performed with Marlboro, Tanglewood, and Ravinia Summer Festivals, Oratorio Society of New York, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Ringle Kamarei speaks glowingly of her New Mexico roots. “Time in Los Alamos was necessary to my becoming a musician. I absorbed a deep sense of responsibility, and professionalism from this community. The broader environment of New Mexico is so rich that you have a head start with the cultural literacy that a classical music career needs. I worked as a stage technician for Los Alamos Concert Society and an usher at the Santa Fe Opera during high school, and I got to meet world class artists. The last time I sang in Popejoy Hall was as part of All-State Choir.”

At the end of her time at LAHS, Ringle Kamarei received the Rotary Club of Los Alamos’s Deborah Beene Memorial Scholarship as well as the Sangre de Cristo Chorale Scholarship.

Mahler’s Second Symphony, often called the Resurrection Symphony is one of his most renowned works, exploring themes of struggle and transcendence. A portion of the finale appeared recently in Netflix’s Maestro on the life of Leonard Bernstein. Tickets for New Mexico Philharmonic’s performance of the full work can be found here.