Naomi Merer Witzen has been performing for twenty years and teaching voice for eight. A recent transplant to the Triangle area, she received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music in voice performance from University of California, Santa Barbara and her Bachelor of Music in vocal performance and opera, including a minor in music theory, from Northwestern University, Magna cum laude.
Naomi enjoys a career as a teacher, scholar, and performer and has worked with numerous companies, including Opera Santa Barbara, the Santa Barbara Symphony, and the Santa Barbara Choral Society. Her classical music performances include the soprano solo in the Mozart Requiem, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Youth in Thomas Cipullo’s After Life (winner of the Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Competition), and both Zweite Dame in Die Zauberflöte and Zerlina in Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the venue where Don Giovanni premiered. While at Northwestern University, Naomi starred in two musical theatre productions – Lucy and the Street Singer in The Threepenny Opera and Linda in The Wedding Singer. Her scholarship culminated in a lecture recital, Get thee to an asylum: a recital on Ophélies’s mad scene, one of several recitals Naomi performed while in Santa Barbara.
As a teacher, Naomi concentrates on airflow, breath control, and Italianate appoggio (or support) as well as releasing tension in the body while singing. To create a more holistic approach, she incorporates acting, diction, artistry, style, and expression into her teaching as well. She works with students to better understand their learning language and then adapts her style to help them grasp the concepts. Naomi’s students have been accepted into prestigious masters programs in drama and musicology and have won competitive roles and solos in their college choirs, acapella groups, and musical theatre performances. Naomi loves teaching students of all ages and backgrounds, including those who want to perform professionally and those who love to sing for fun. She speaks English fluently and beginner Spanish and German. She can teach diction in the following languages: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Latin, Czech, and Hebrew.
