Anthony Price Radford

Anthony Price Radford is Professor of Voice and Opera at California State University, Fresno, where he serves as the Coordinator for the Voice Performance degree and is the director of the Fresno State Opera Theatre. 

His interests are in vocal pedagogy and in fostering ties between communities and opera at educational and cultural institutions. His varied performing career spans thirty years in top professional choirs, as a young artist apprentice for opera companies, as a children’s opera performer for large opera companies and community organizations and as a solo recitalist in concert across the U.S and Canada. At Fresno State, he teaches voice, opera, vocal pedagogy and vocal literature and is the founder of The Center for Children’s Opera at Fresno State. He coordinates the Fresno State Opera Theatre, an ensemble that has in the last few years toured the Central Valley, presented fully staged productions of Madama Butterfly, Die Fledermaus, La Boheme, Carmen, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Elixir of Love, Albert Herring, and hosted the Fresno Opera and Orchestra Academy staging Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. In 2014 at Fresno State he directed the world premiere of Evan Mack and Joshua McGuire’s The Secret of Luca. In 2016 received a grant from the Central Valley Community Foundation to commission a new opera work from Mack and McGuire titled Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena. Dr. Radford and his students at Fresno State produced this opera for children and toured it in Fresno County for over 3000 school children. The opera today receives multiple performances across the country every holiday season including the San Francisco Opera Guild and Opera in the Heights, Houston. 

His teaching has taken him to Germany, Great Britain, Canada and across the U.S and he is a published author, and presenter at many international and national conferences. He is a regular adjudicator with the National Association of Teachers of Singing as well as Classical Singer. He served as the Review Editor for the Opera Journal and as part of the Board of Directors of the National Opera Association as Research Chair. His reviews of performances and scholarly works appear regularly in the Journal and online as well as in the New York Singing Teachers Association VoicePrints. His review of the Roscoe, a new American opera was published in “Bootlegger of the Soul: The literary legacy of William Kennedy” (2018) by the State University of New York University Press, a festschrift to Pulitzer Prize winning author William Kennedy.

Originally from Toronto, Canada, he holds a B.A. in Political Science from York University and a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.  He was an Othmer Fellow at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree.  Dr. Radford’s studies also took him to the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England where he appeared in opera roles at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Snape Maltings.  His inspiration for teaching comes from his work with Cornelius Reid and he is currently a voice student of Ellen Shade. Previous teachers include Ariel Bybee, Carol Forte, and William Shomos. In his spare time he reads historical fiction, learns Welsh and plays with his children and dogs.