Profile

Dr. Gustavo Castro works as Vocal Coach, Opera Music Director, Instructor of Undergraduate Lyric Diction, and Ballet Accompanist.
 

As a collaborative pianist, he has performed a vast repertoire with singers and instrumentalists. This activity has taken him to perform recitals in Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Nicaragua, and the United States. Since 1997 he performs regularly in a duet with his wife, American contralto Dr. Karen Esquivel. Most recently he recorded two sets of songs with soprano Dr. Camille Ortiz for Art Song Augmented, an online forum devoted to art songs by underrepresented composers created by Dr. Stephen Rodgers.

 

Gustavo Castro has collaborated in productions with opera companies and apprenticeship programs such as Astoria Music Festival (OR), Butler Opera Center (TX), Cascadia Chamber Opera (OR), Costa Rica National Lyric Company (CR), Florida State Opera (FL), Eugene Opera (OR), Opera Bend (OR), and Opera Nova Costa Rica (CR). He has served as an opera conductor, assistant conductor, chorus master, rehearsal pianist, continuo player, and orchestral pianist in more than 50 different operatic productions.

 

As an active member of the National Opera Association (NOA), Gustavo Castro has presented, alongside Karen Esquivel, lectures on French and Spanish Opera. He also serves as an adjudicator for the NOA Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Composition Competition, and occasionally as collaborative pianist for the NOA Carolyn Bailey Argento Vocal Competition and the NOA Collegiate Opera Scenes Competition. In 2012 he won the NOA Twenty-eighth Scholarly Papers Competition for outstanding scholarly papers on operatic subjects, resulting in the publication of his article “Spanish Operatic Identity vis-à-vis Bizet’s Carmen” in The Opera Journal (June 2013). 

 

With Karen Esquivel, he co-founded and co-directs Opera Nova Costa Rica, a summer training program destined to give young opera singers from Costa Rica and the United States the opportunity of preparing and performing fully staged operas in Costa Rica. He also serves as a board member of the newly created Kenyan Classical Singer’s Organization alongside other colleagues from Indiana University and the University of Oregon.

 

In 2012 he started accompanying ballet classes at Lane Community College under the tutelage of ballet mistress Florabelle Moses. Then, in 2015, he began playing for ballet classes at the SOMD Dance Department.  

 

Dr. Castro holds degrees from Florida State University, the National Conservatory of Music of Strasbourg (France), the University of Costa Rica, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at the University of Idaho Lionel Hampton School of Music, the University of Central Missouri, the University of Costa Rica, and the National University of Costa Rica.