About
Welcome to TeressaByrne.com
Thank you for visiting! Here you will find my performance history, music repertoire, mp3′s, film clips, press reviews, YouTube page with videos & performance dates, and “shout-outs” to my friends, colleagues & companies. Content updates to this site and YouTube channel will happen regularly; please feel free to drop me a line on the Contact Page to say hello.
Biography
“A feisty diva with a rocket soprano voice” – San Diego Reader
Teressa is a classically-trained coloratura soprano and actress who performs professionally in opera, musical theater, concert, non-musical stage and independent film, with occasional forays into commercial work and variety entertainment.
That’s the nutshell.
Okay, here’s a few highlights from the adventures of a California Girl:
I have sung and danced in front of a seemingly-vertical wall of 17,000 patrons at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles (splashing across the JumboTron screen in a bright red silk evening gown); sung in recital for the US Ambassador to Malta and embassy guests at the Ambassadorial Residence in Valetta (if memory serves, the British, French and Tunisian ambassadors to Malta were there); donned Dickensian costumes in both snowy upstate New York, and desert-dry Los Angeles; belted out showtunes and pop songs in sequined gowns aboard Caribbean- & mid-Pacific-bound cruiseships; bravely sung Italian opera arias in front of Sicilian first-chair musicians, who liked it (if their tapping their bows on their music stands and stomping their feet is any indication)!
On film, I have slayed zombies at 3am on location in a 110-year-old house in Vacaville, presented Oscar awards before an invisible audience on a green-screen stage, struggled to control dangerous telepathic abilities, escaped from wartime criminals, made sandwiches for sad old men, and thrown myself into the sea to escape a controlling husband. My film projects have screened at festivals across the country, and as of 2011, internationally.
I grew up in beautiful Carmel, California, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from UCLA, and began studying voice while in school; after graduating, I studied with Lee & Sally Sweetland in the San Fernando Valley, focusing on the lyrico-spinto soprano & American musical theatre repertoire, and I currently work with Carl Franzen in San Jose on the lyric & dramatic coloratura repertoire.
When not working or studying, I love prowling antique and vintage shops, reading thriller fiction, dropping in on the free days at San Francisco’s various museums, and practicing Hatha and Bikram yoga, and ballet. We (that is, I & husband Joseph Foss – wine industry professional, 1st-level sommelier, SAG actor, movement/clowning teacher, and former Disney stunt performer) live with two cats in Northern California. Our garden is continually visited by wild critters – raccoons, finches, hummingbirds, squirrels, deer, our neighbor’s golden retriever, and the occasional skunk – all of whom tend to pause & look curiously at the windows when they hear a certain soprano vocalizing inside.