About
Tenor Zachary Taylor has been lauded for his “honeyed, pliant tenor” and “sincere” portrayals. He has spent time as a young artist with several companies, including Des Moines Metro Opera, Pensacola Opera, Nashville Opera and, most recently, the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee, where he now resides as a current Baumgartner Studio Artist. Zachary is skilled in several varieties of music, including opera, operetta, art song, musical theater, and some contemporary genres.
As a member of the Baumgartner Studio with Florentine Opera for the 2025-26 season, Zachary will cover Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, sing the roles of Nathanaël and Spalanzani and cover the titular role in Les Contes d’Hoffman, and sing Spoletta and cover Cavaradossi in Tosca, as well as perform in a touring children’s rendition of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’Amore and in numerous outreach concerts and events.
Most recently, Zachary sang a well-received rendition of Justice Antonin Scalia in Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg with the Florentine Opera in July 2025, where he spent his summer as a Summer Studio Artist. Prior to this, he made a return to the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra in May 2025 as the tenor soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, where he was praised for singing with "pleading passion.” Earlier in the year, Zachary spent several months as a Mary Ragland Emerging Artist with Nashville Opera. There, he sang the lovesick sailor Ralph Rackstraw in their production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comedy H.M.S. Pinafore, where he was regarded as a “highlight of the production” and praised for playing the role with “adeptness and alacrity.” Earlier in the 2024-25 season, Zachary joined Liberty City Arts for their program Soirée aux libertés, an evening of French mélodie, and Wilmington Concert Opera for their program “Arts After Dark.”
During the summer of 2024, Zachary returned to Des Moines Metro Opera for his second summer as an Apprentice Artist. There, he sang the Second Nazarene in Salome and in the chorus of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and was complimented in Opera Today for his “honeyed, pliant tenor.” Zachary spent the 2023-24 season as a Jan Miller Studio Artist with Pensacola Opera, where he sang Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, sang Normanno and covered Arturo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and sang Dr. Blind and covered Alfred in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. While in Pensacola, he also joined the Pensacola Choral Society as the guest soloist in Joan Szymko’s choral piece, At Such a Dizzy Height. In December 2023, Zachary joined the Greensboro Choral Society as the tenor soloist for Handel’s Messiah, which he then jumped in to sing two days later with the choir at First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, NC. Shortly after this, he returned to the Wichita-based program Music on Site to sing Alfred in Die Fledermaus. Zachary then headed back to Greensboro in January 2024 to sing the role of the Father in Kurt Weill’s work, Die sieben Todsünden, with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. Shortly after he concluded his time as a studio artist in Pensacola, Zachary headed to Charlotte, NC to sing Pang in Opera Carolina’s production of Puccini’s Turandot, which was regarded as “delightful.”
The summer of 2023 was Zachary’s first as an Apprentice Artist with Des Moines Metro Opera, where he covered the Master of Ceremonies and sang in the chorus of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges and sang in the chorus of Bizet’s Carmen. In December 2022, he joined Music on Site for the first time, singing Don José in Bizet’s Carmen. In January 2022, Zachary joined the Charlotte Symphony to sing the Father in Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden.
Zachary received his Master of Music degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2023, where he studied under Dr. Robert Bracey. While at UNCG, he sang Ferrando in Così fan tutte, the Witch in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Vašek in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, and Mozart in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri. He received his Bachelor of Music from Towson University in 2020, where he studied under Dr. Min Jin. Zachary is a current student of Jason Ferrante.
Outside of music, Zachary enjoys cooking for himself and his friends, playing video games, and endlessly quoting Tim Robinson’s show I Think You Should Leave. He loves playing pickleball, cornhole, and ultimate frisbee, and has recently found a love for lifting weights after a successful weight loss journey. He also begrudgingly roots for an eclectic collection of sports teams that bring him nothing but misery year after year. Zachary is a native of Medford, NJ, and currently resides in the Philadelphia area when not on contracts.
