A native of the Delaware Valley, Richard Shapp first embarked on serious musical studies at Temple University's College of Music, earning a Bachelors Degree in Vocal Performance and a Masters of Music History. He next pursued advanced opera training at The Curtis Institute of Music under Metropolitan Opera stage director Dino Yannopoulos and received a graduate level Artists Diploma. His operatic studies were rounded-off at the London Opera Centre.
Mr. Shapp made his debut with The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Chester County in August 2004, performing the role of the Mikado. Four months later, he returned to the GSSCC to sing The Learned Judge in its annual production of Trial By Jury in the Chester County Courthouse. The following year he stepped off the bench to tackle Angelina's none-to-bright legal counsel (the reign of James the Second, indeed!), which role he will reprise with the GSSCC in December 2007.
Richard is thrilled to be able to continue studying G-&-S and performing with the legendary Bruce Montgomery. In August 2005, he performed under Monty at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England as Captain Sir Edward Corcoran, K.C.B. in Utopia, Limited, the role he will reprise with Monty and the GSSCC in November 2007.
Dick Shapp can trace his love of classical music to the 1962 production of Ruddigore by The Savoy Company. Immediately bit by the Gilbert and Sullivan bug, he asked his parents to buy him recordings of every G-&-S opera, the music of which he memorized at second hearings. Unfortunately for young Shapp, however, he attended schools which deemed G-&-S beneath their aesthetic dignities, and so he was unable to transfer his love for these operettas from the family living room (or shower) to the boards. Meanwhile, over the years he applied his knowledge of G-&-S to drive his family to distraction with incessant Gilbertian quotations.
During November of 1999, Richard Shapp finally crowned his fond hope, singing his first G-&-S opera in a public forum...a Philadelphia City Hall courtroom to be exact. Under the stage direction of F. Hastings Griffin, during multiple performances of Trial By Jury, he alternated as The Learned Judge and the Counsel to Angelina. He joined The Savoy Company in 2003, and has portrayed the judicially-minded Emperor of Japan in The Mikado, the lovelorn Sir Marmaduke Pointdextre in The Sorcerer, the always adorable Don Alhambra del Bolero, the Grand Inquisitor of Spain in The Gondoliers and Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore.
Additional G-&-S activities have included performing Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance at Moravian College in Bethlehem (2004). With the Rose Valley Chorus and Orchestra, Richard appeared in back-to-back performances of H.M.S. Pinafore as Captain Corcoran and as James John Cox in Cox and Box by Sullivan and Burnand (2005). In November 2006, he appeared as the Emperor of Japan with The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of the Mid-Hudson Valley (New York) in an "up-dated" Mikado. And last summer, he returned to the Buxton Festival with the Philadelphia Gilbert and Sullivan Union as Lord Mountararat in Iolanthe.
Richard Shapp has sung over 65 different principal and supporting roles in such operas as Carmen, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, La Traviata, Eugene Onégin, The Barber of Seville, The Rape of Lucretia and Lucia di Lammermoor. He appeared with opera companies in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Central City, Hartford, Baltimore, Barcelona, Jerusalem, Haifa and was principal baritone of the Israel National Opera. It was Mr. Shapp's privilege to have shared the stage, in solo roles, with such notable singers as Luciano Pavarotti, Richard Tucker, Jan Peerce, Sherrill Milnes, Nicola Moscona, James Morris, Joan Sutherland, Anna Moffo and Roberta Peters. Orchestral appearances included those with The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Robin Hood Dell (conducted by James Levine), the Pittsburgh Symphony at the Ambler Music Festival, the Israel Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony and the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. In October 2004, Richard Shapp appeared with the Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra (Portugal's leading symphony) under the baton of Lawrence Foster.