The countertenor Augustine Mercante made his European debut at the 2007 Salzburg Festival singing at the Prizewinners' Concert of the Mozarteum's Summer Academy and his Carnegie Hall debut the following February in Handel's Dettinger Te Deum under the baton of Ton Koopman. Other recent engagements include Stradella's La Susanna with Brandywine Baroque (DE), Buxtehude's Jubilate Domino with New Horizons (TX), Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Lidio in Cavalli's L'Egisto with the University of North Texas (UNT) Opera, Isaac in Benjamin Britten's Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and Orff's Carmina Burana with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. As the winner of the 2008 Summer Study Scholarship from Early Music America, Gus attended the Seattle Baroque Opera Academy in August.
In 2009 he sings with Amor Artis in New York City, the Dallas Bach Society, the Rainbow Chorale of Delaware, and recitals in Texas,
Delaware, and Salzburg, where he will also be the alto soloist in both Mozart's Requiem and Pergolesi's Stabat mater.In 2005, Gus founded LifeSongs, an organization with the goal of providing financial assistance to exemplary charities, individuals with special needs, and noteworthy community-centered projects. Through a benefit concert series to fundraise, a diversity-awareness program to educate, and the annual awarding of the John J. Oldigs Memorial Scholarship to further advance the career of a young Delaware musician, LifeSongs has touched lives throughout the world. Gus is a founding member of the Rainbow Chorale of Delaware and served on the Board of Directors in its first three years. For his dedication to these and other projects in the Delaware arts community, Gus was featured in Visions Magazine's Thirty People Under 30 to Watch.
For winning the 2007 Austrian American Society (of Wilmington, DE) Competition, Gus earned a fellowship to study in Salzburg at the Internationalen Sommerakademie Mozarteum in summer 2007. At the conclusion of the summer, he was named one of two Outstanding Vocalists and invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival. In 2008 he won second place in the Bel Canto Vocal Competition held in Providence, RI, and was the youngest finalist in the 2008 Ft. Worth Opera Marguerite McCammon Vocal Competition. He holds additional awards from the University of Delaware Alumni Association, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the Five Towns Music and Art Foundation, the Long Island Masterworks Chorale, the Donna Reed Foundation, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
Gus holds the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Delaware where he was the inaugural recipient of the Robert King Memorial Scholarship and will earn the Master of Music degree from UNT in February 2009. Further information about Gus, including upcoming projects and engagements, can be found at www.augustinemercante.com.
