Giancarlo Guerrero leads the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus in Mozart’s soul-stirring Requiem, left incomplete at the time of the composer’s premature death at 35. Written during the height of the AIDS crisis, John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 is another requiem of sorts, memorializing friends and colleagues lost to the disease.

Fri, Aug 7 · 6:30pm & Sat, Aug 8 · 7:30pm

Originally from Chicago, Marissa Simmons is a contralto, noted for her “rawly sensual, wry, whiskey-toned voice” (San Francisco Classical Voice), and “deep, evenly produced mezzo and theatrical magnetism” (South Florida Classical Review). She is also distinguished by her “comic precision” (San Francisco Examiner) and praised as “una formidable” (Especial/El Nuevo Herald).

Simmons’ has performed a variety of roles including La Zia Principessa, La Zelatrice, & La Maestra delle Novizie (Suor Angelica), Miss Todd (Old Maid and the Thief), Carmen (La tragédie de Carmen), Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Margret (Wozzek), Prudence (Dust of the Road), Mother (I will fly like a bird), Tisbe (La Cenerentola), Nerone & Ottone (L’incoronazione di Poppea), Iolanthe (Iolanthe), Maria Callas (Jackie O), Roane Heckle (Great Scott), and more.

Simmons has sung with many prestigious companies including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Virginia Arts Festival, Virginia Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Charlottesville Opera, Music Academy of the West, Miami Lyric Opera, Thompson Street Opera Company, Evanston Chamber Opera, the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company, and more.

Simmons earned a Master of Music under Catherine Cook at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She received her Bachelor of Music in both Classical Voice Performance and Music Theory/Composition from the University of Miami Frost School of Music under Dr. Esther Jane Hardenbergh and Dr. Lansing McLoskey.