Melinda Kessler Spratlan

Professor Emeritus of Music

Specialization: Technique and repertoire for voice, early music, German Lieder, contemporary music

Soprano Melinda Spratlan has an outstanding reputation for versatility in refined and captivating performances of various stylistic periods. She is inspired by a deep love of text and is drawn to music of all periods from the Renaissance to the present.

Highlights of her career include singing Handel and Bach for the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin, Purcell and Mozart for the Castle Hill Early Music Festival, Brahms at Tanglewood, Schubert and Wolf in Vienna for the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Vienna, Rachmaninoff in Montreal, Webern for Gunther Schuller's Twentieth Century Innovations Series in New York City, and Schönberg for the Opera Company of Boston. Along with these and many other appearances, she is also a frequent soloist in the Five College area of Massachusetts.

A dedicated teacher, Spratlan particularly enjoyed teaching voice in the Mount Holyoke music department, because "the program is so committed to having individual and ensemble performance be an equal partner with the study of music history, theory, and composition." As a vocal coach, she enjoyed "helping my students develop a voice technique that is free of excess tension and manipulation and that results in a healthful and free production of vocal sound. That moment when a student's voice suddenly encompasses that heretofore unreachable high note, subtly blends registers, or can support a longer phrase, never ceases to fill me with delight."

Spratlan has studied with Blake Stern and Herta Glaz and has been invited to sing in master classes given by such eminent artists as Elly Ameling, Hans Hotter, Gérard Souzay, Kim Borg, Jörg Demus, and Max van Egmond. She has recorded for Decca and CRI.