“Aluwihare’s singing was impeccable. Her voice was colored with the perfect amount of smokiness in the lower register. The role sat beautifully within her tessitura. The mezzo delivered her lyrics with excellent diction, enabling the audience to hear every word whether the score called for subtlety or power.  The reflection pool was in every way her playground as she splashed about with her feet, and sometimes hands, dancing her gypsy dances and chasing after Escamillo like a bull in a ring.” – OperaWire, City Lyric Opera 2018-19 Review: La Tragédie de Carmen

Athlone Artists is pleased to welcome to the roster Sri Lankan-American mezzo soprano Tahanee Aluwihare, who has been celebrated for her “magnificently rich, earthy mezzo-soprano” (Boston Music Intelligencer) and “impeccable” singing (OperaWire). 

Recently, Ms. Aluwihare “gave a masterful turn as the spinsterish Marcellina [Le nozze di Figaro]” (San Francisco Chronicle) in her debut with Opera San Jose; made her debut with Cambridge Chamber Ensemble in the title role of Holst’s seldom performed opera, Savitri; and returned to Opera Idaho for the role of Ježibaba in Rusalka, and Boston Camerata for the title role in Dido and Aeneas. She also performed the title role in Bizet/Brook’s La tragédie de Carmen with City Lyric Opera in New York City, for which Voce Di Meche lauded her “dusky instrument and seductive presentation [that] gave us a believable free-spirited Carmen.”  

Tahanee grew up in Sri Lanka as part of an artistic family, albeit not a musical one. “Most of my friends in Sri Lanka came from musical families,” she explains. “But my family was more interested in things like art history, and painting. Opera was not a part of it.  I really wanted to learn to play the cello, but my family had a violin. So that’s what I played.”

Tahanee admits that her “gateway drug” to opera was the music of young star Charlotte Church. “At the time, I would play her over and over again. The Habanera (Carmen) was on her album, and the CD had a whole centerfold. I listened to it so often I scratched the hell out of it!” 

She auditioned for a local choir ahead of their European tour, equally excited to perform and to find a way to travel abroad. “Of course I wanted to be a singer,” she says, “But I didn’t fully realize that it could be a career.”

Tahanee left Sri Lanka for the United States to attend Mount Holyoke College, intent on studying anthropology. “I thought I was going to be an academic,” she says. “I was always interested in social sciences; I was always reading history books. I gravitated toward research.” Still, Tahanee loved singing, and performed on several occasions with the Mount Holyoke Orchestra with conductor Tian Ng Hui, and was awarded the Dorothy Currey Award for Excellence in Music for two consecutive years. And when it came to graduate school, her voice teacher steered her in the direction of music.  She was accepted into the master’s program in vocal performance at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, and decided to give it a try. 

“I love opera because it incorporates so many different artistic elements,” Tahanee says. “There is a sense of elation and accomplishment in the physical aspect of being able to project over an orchestra. I really gravitate toward these niche artistic forms – I like things that are a little difficult – or challenging. For me, my love for opera was pretty immediate.”

Tahanee enjoyed success in her early operatic career, earning spots in resident or young artist programs with Opera Memphis, Opera Idaho, Charlottesville Opera, and programs abroad including the Berlin Opera Academy, the Lidal North Opera Workshop in Crete, Greece, Opera Noord-Holland-Noord in the Netherlands, Houston Grand Opera’s (HGOco), and Opera Classica Europa, with whom she toured in Germany and France. 

During the pandemic, she premiered the role of Anjana in Kamala Sankaram’s live streamed virtual-reality opera Miranda with Tri-cities Opera and participated in multiple online concerts, but she was feeling ready for her next challenge. Tahanee enrolled in school again, this time at Tufts, where she is currently earning her second master’s degree in museum education, focusing on art of Early Modern Europe.

Tahanee is always searching to find the intersection where art and music meet. “In my master’s work I try to look through both lenses,” she says. Her studies in art lead her to take a more holistic approach to creating a character on stage. “I find it helpful to see and know a lot about the art that a character might have consumed,” she says. “It affects the way I think about people – the nuance and the way they speak; their private vs. public life.”  

“In the past, people – artists and musicians – were making these grand tours to Europe, coming back and writing in other languages. We don’t live in such a multicultural way as we did before. There was much more movement between the arts and people. In a way, people were more (deeply) connected. Knowing this informs the way I approach art and music.”

This connectedness is another reason Tahanee loves opera. “Yes, it is hard,” she says. “And however talented you are, you have to put the hours in. Similar to being an academic, there’s no shortcut to success. We must always take the long way around. There’s a great communal aspect of a community of artists coming together, and (that) is so gratifying.” 

Mezzo Soprano Tahanee Aluwihare