"Robert Breault sang with a lovely tenor."  New York Times

"His agile, attractive tenor made for a captivating, ardently delivered "Where e'er you walk," in which Breault affirmed Jupiter's status as a deity by maintaining his benevolent loving stance..." Opera News

Excerpt From PlaybillArts:

"Holland praised the "lovely tenor" of Robert Breault as Jupiter, while Jorden praised Matthew White's "virile countertenor" in the all-too-small role of Athamas (Semele's original suitor) and the "wonderfully expressive" Sanford Sylvan, who "made every word vivid" as King Cadmus and as Somnus, the god of sleep."

Read the whole article here.

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From "On the Beat" by Brian Kellow in Opera News, November 2007:

"...Somewhat lost in the avalanche of praise for New York City Opera's new Semele was the performance of tenor ROBERT BREAULT. He gave a witty, touching account of Jupiter (with overtones of John F. Kennedy); somehow he took STEPHEN LAWLESS's rather pointlessly busy stage direction and gave the most committed performance on the stage. (His lovely rendition of "Where e'er you walk" was also the vocal highlight of the afternoon.) He has been around New York a bit: he sang Carmen and Traviata with City Opera and also turned up in Tancredi with Opera Orchestra of New York a few seasons ago. But this was, I believe, the first time I had heard Breault, and I left the State Theater with one of the great feelings you can have as an audience member — a sense of discovery.

Breault cut his teeth on Handel, singing Messiah with NICHOLAS MCGEGAN and the Philharmonia Baroque. "When discussion came for this year at City Opera," he says, "Semele was one of the possibilities, and I asked my agent to push for this. This is something I used to do and hadn't been doing. I don't see myself as the next Villazón or anything like that. But this really fit into the career track that I wanted to explore."

Breault believes that acting should inspire singing. "The clue to every single scene is the music. That's something that we all as singers need to remind ourselves. I had a tabula rasa in terms of ornamentation. I didn't come in with any of them pre-written; I wanted them to be written because of what was devised onstage. [Conductor] ANTONY WALKER was great about that. The ornaments I'm doing almost every night are a little bit different, and based on the staging."

A native of Marinette, Wisconsin, Breault sang in the Met Auditions when he was twenty-one. "I came in singing the Prize Song," he remembers, "and I changed it to 'Una furtiva lagrima,' and everyone was laughing, and I had no clue why. One judge was LORNA HAYWOOD, who ended up being my mentor at the University of Michigan. Now I'm married to her sister. Instead of going out and having to live in New York and doing temp jobs and the things that singers do when they're in their twenties, I started teaching. I continued to learn. Now I'm behind, in the sense of what I'm doing in New York. A lot of people are like, 'Who the hell is this guy? What's he doing here?'"

Since 1992, Breault has taught on the voice faculty at the University of Utah. (His students include CELENA SHAFER.) "I find that I can almost predict where they're going to end up by the amount of curiosity they have," he says. "They think if they have a great voice, they're going to have a great career. But I'm very excited with these iPods. It's made it possible for students to sort of own records again. They can find a GEORGES THILL recording and pull it offline and share it with everybody. I'm trying to use this new technology to inspire them to be more curious than their predecessors perhaps have been."

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More Reviews

"The singers perform everything asked of them with good nature, and musical standards are high under conductor Antony Walker’s alert baton.  Robert Breault (Jupiter) never less than (an) elegant stylist."  New York Magazine

"This kind of singing - along with Genaux's nifty double-act as Juno and Semele's sister Ino, and Robert Breault's keenly focused tenor as the presidential Jupiter - made what could have been "Handel for Dummies" emerge as devilishly clever and disgracefully successful."  New York Post

"Portraying Jupiter and Apollo, Robert Breault managed to be sly, heroic and vulnerable, as needed."  The Financial Times

"Tenor Robert Breault ranged well across Jupiter's ardent and anguished moods, a touch of distinguished gray in his hair."  The Newark Star-Ledger