Opera Great Joins Ole Miss Music Faculty

Kallen Esperian, one of the world’s leading sopranos, has joined the faculty of the music department at the University of Mississippi. Esperian, who has performed in nearly all of the great opera houses of the world is beginning a one-year term as artist-in residence. She will give private and group voice lessons and teach classes on auditioning, performing, and the music business.

Esperian lives in Memphis, not far from the Ole Miss campus in Oxford. She wants to cut down on her extensive worldwide travel and performance schedule which she has maintained for the past 25 years. A graduate of the University of Illinois, she was the winner of the 1985 Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition. Her performance with Pavarotti in China were the subject of the 1987 film documentary, Distant Harmony.