Hunter Shaner is a male contralto based in the Washington DC area. He completed his MM in 2020 at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he worked with renowned soprano Carol Vaness.

“I always want to see something new.” Shaner is driven by a desire to see growth and change of classical music, constantly seeking projects that push the boundaries. “Opera is a living, breathing art form, not a museum. The very nature of music is contemporary and ephemeral, no performance can ever be repeated exactly the same.”

He tackles these challenges in his career by performing unconventional roles like Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, octave-transposed roles including Guillot in Massenet’s Manon, and new art songs by up-and-coming composers. In the fall of 2022 he portrayed the female Messaggera in The Nightsong of Orpheus, an original collage work by IN Series.

Even his traditional roles are known to subvert expectations in a compelling and exciting way, finding sweetness in the venom of Tolomeo, the villain of Handel’s Giulio Cesare or a simmering rage in the composed fairy king Oberon in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.