JOSEPH SHORE has performed many of the greatest baritone roles with opera companies throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, receiving critical acclaim for his portrayals of Rigoletto, Germont, Amonasro, Renato, and Falstaff, among the Verdi roles, as well as for Alfio, Tonio, Scarpia, Barnaba, Telramund, Pizarro, and Salieri.  Mr. Shore has performed with the Lyric Opera  of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the San Diego Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the New Jersey State Opera, Tulsa Opera, Opera Omaha, the Arizona Opera, the Nevada Opera, the Toledo and Dayton Operas, the Lyric Opera of Dallas, the Fort Worth Opera, the Goldovsky Opera Theatre, the Chamber Opera Theatre of New York, New York Grand Opera, Opera Classics of New Jersey, the Chautauqua , Aspen, and Northern Ireland Festivals, the Edmonton Opera, The Canadian Broadcasting Company, The British Broadcasting Company, the Belfast Grand Opera, the Youngstown Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, The Raleigh Symphony, and the Jerome Hines Opera Troupe.

    In the 1980’s he had some of his biggest successes as Salieri in the New York premiere and revival of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, Mozart and Salieri.  Also during the decade of the 80’s, Mr. Shore gave memorable performances of his Verdi roles in regional opera houses across America. In 1984 he made his European debut in Belfast, portraying the title role of Rigoletto, at the historic Belfast Grand Opera House in a series of performances broadcast by the BBC. In the decade of the 90’s, he added the roles of Barnaba, Scarpia, Renato, Schicchi, the title role of Boris Godounov (in the Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration), and Robert in Tchaikovsky’s opera, Iolanta,  a role which Galina Vishnevskaya personally selected for him.

    Mr. Shore continued to sing Verdi and dramatic baritone roles as well as oratorio and concerts until 2004 when heart disease closed his stage career.  Concert audiences often heard him perform rare material, like Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death, rare works by over-looked composers, like Riccardo Zandonai, Russian folkslieder, American songs and Gospel. 

    Today, in addition to his singing, Mr. Shore has become noted as a professional voice teacher. Indeed, Jerome Hines, in his new book, The Four Voices of Man, gives credit to “Joseph Shore who gave me a better understanding of the male’s high voice.”  Mr. Shore’s  published article in the 1995  National Association of Teachers of Singing Journal, entitled  “A Great Singer  on Great Singing, an in-depth interview with Bass Jerome Hines” concerning vocal training, technique and trends within singing, shows the blend of voice science and historic Bel Canto that have become the hall-mark of his work as a teacher. As a young artist, he performed with great stars like Jerome Hines, James McCracken, Lucine Amara, Carlo Cossutta, Ezio Flagello, Gilda Cruz-Romo, Frances Yeend, Lucia Evangelista, Sherrill Milnes, Paul Plishka, and many others, learning the art of singing by observing great singers.  When Mr. Shore joined the music faculty of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and later The University of British Columbia, he added to his empirical training, the insights gained in this century from voice science.  He gives workshops in America and Canada on voice science in voice training.  He was also a member of Jerome Hines’s Opera company for twenty years.  Mr. Shore considers Jerome Hines his mentor in opera because of all the instruction he received from Mr. Hines during their work together, and because of the outstanding role model Mr. Hines provided as a person and a singer.

The great basso, Jerome Hines, had this to say about Joseph Shore:

“I have had the good fortune to both employ and sing with Joseph Shore over a period of many years. I have always been a sincere admirer of his beautiful voice and obviously superior grasp of vocal technique. Having performed with him again recently, I can say that Joe Shore is a world-class singer who really knows what he is doing. He has not lost anything. In fact, he sings better now!  Having had the stimulating and thought-provoking opportunity to read his treatise on the use of the human voice, I am even more impressed by this man’s extraordinary gifts.”  - Jerome Hines, Metropolitan Opera