Carole Gaspar
Director of Vocal Studies
Professor of Music
Voice
Professor Carole Gaspar is a graduate of Baylor University and Washington University.
Her principal teachers were Leslie Chabay and Jennie Tourel.
Throughout her career, she has won many awards including the G.B. Dealy competition,
the Irene Jordan scholarship, the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra competition, the Southwest
and Midwest Regional Metropolitan Opera auditions, the St. Louis Artist Presentation
award, the St. Louis Philharmonic competition, and the National Society of Arts and
Letters award in Chicago. Following six months of study at the International Opera
Studio in Zurich, Switzerland, she performed with the Essen (Germany) Opera Company,
making her professional debut as Marcellina in Fidelio. Since joining the Webster faculty in 1975, Professor Gaspar has earned seven diplomas
from conservatories in Salzburg, Nice, and Geneva for studies in the poetry and music
of the German lied and the French melodie. Her teachers have included Erik Werba, Kim Borg, Dalton Baldwin, and Gerard Souzay.
Professor Gaspar has given numerous, highly acclaimed concerts in the St. Louis area
and frequently collaborates with composers in premiering new works for solo voice.
With a broad repertoire of 19th and 20th century songs, she has made an intensive
study of the works of Brahms, Schoenberg, and other Viennese composers.
She collaborated with Allen Carl Larson in many performances of works for voice and
orchestra, and enjoyed an extensive career as a recitalist with pianist Daniel Schene.
In 1990, she founded the Institute for Advanced Vocal Studies in Paris, a summer program
for professional level singers and pianists dedicated to studies of French vocal chamber
music.
In the fall of 2002, she organized a weeklong workshop devoted to French vocal literature
and the writings of Victor Hugo, bringing an international faculty of specialists
to St. Louis.
