Biography

Neil Shicoff (born June 2, 1949) is an American opera singer and cantor and known for his lyric tenor singing and his dramatic, emotional acting. Neil Shicoff was born in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music, with his father, the hazzan Sidney Shicoff and others, including Franco Corelli in the early 1980s. He sang in small theatres in New York before music school, including a Don Jose in Bizet's Carmen at Amato Opera and small roles at Juilliard, and was an apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera in the summer of 1973. His professional debut as a tenor lead in a major opera house was in the title role in Verdi's Ernani, conducted by James Levine in Cincinnati in 1975.