About Wilbur
In four decades as a professional entertainer, Mr. Pauley has accumulated credits in a variety of musical and theatrical disciplines. His work in classical music extends from medieval liturgical dramas to contemporary operatic premieres, including roles in The Ghosts of Versailles at The Met, McTeague and Amistad at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Atlas and Where's Dick? at Houston Grand Opera, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories at New York City Opera. In 2019, Mr.Pauley sang with symphony orchestras in Buffalo, Shanghai, New Jersey and Oregon, reprised his roles in Haroun with Boston Modern Opera Project, sang Astradamors in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and made his debut at the Tanglewood Music Festival.
Mr. Pauley has appeared internationally at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Teatro Nacional in Lisbon, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Triennale in Cologne, and other European festivals in Edinburgh, Spoleto, Ravenna, Ilmajoki and Salzburg. Some of his numerous North American engagements have included Santa Fe Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Glimmerglass Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, Edmonton Opera, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Outside the classical music world, Wilbur Pauley has appeared twice on Broadway: in the Peter Hall production of The Merchant of Venice (with Dustin Hoffman), and in the musical Band In Berlin. His voice can be heard on eleven Disney film soundtracks, including the original Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Tangled.
In 1992 Wilbur Pauley founded the male vocal ensemble Hudson Shad. He has appeared with Hudson Shad in almost 200 performances (from Arezzo to Zagreb) of Weill's Seven Deadly Sins and has thrice recorded the work, once with Radio Symphony Orchester Wien and Marianne Faithfull, once with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur, and in 2019 with the Oregon Symphony, led by Carlos Kalmar, with the singer Storm Large. His arrangements have also been recorded by the late cabaret artist Nancy LaMott and by the rock group They Might Be Giants.
More recently, Wilbur Pauley has sung the Brahms Requiem, Indianapolis, 2020; Sound And Fury, Anna Clyne, Grant Park Festival, 2021; Seven Deadly Sins, Princeton Festival, 2022; and sang on the soundtrack for Disney’s Disenchanted, November 2022. Pauley was featured in two productions with Chicago Opera Theatre in 2023: Britten’s Albert Herring and Shostakovich’s The Nose.
Wilbur is a graduate of Westminster Choir College, and he is originally from Beaver, PA.