William McGraw, baritone, retired from CCM in May of 2021 after a 35-year tenure as Professor of Voice. McGraw studied voice with the renowned Wagnerian soprano Margaret Harshaw and began his professional singing career under the care of the inestimable Boris Goldovsky. His operatic roles include Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Marcello in La bohéme, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Germont in La Traviata, Konrad Nachtigall in Die Meistersinger, Marco in Gianni Schicchi and John Proctor in The Crucible. McGraw has performed with opera companies including Boston Opera (with the late Sarah Caldwell), Goldovsky Opera on Tour, Greater Miami Opera (now Florida Grand Opera), Cincinnati Opera, Dayton Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Maracaibo, Venezuela Opera, Shreveport Opera and Kentucky Opera.
McGraw has had the good fortune of sharing the solo stage with internationally acclaimed artists soprano Deborah Voigt, tenor Ben Heppner and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe at Cincinnati’s May Festival, under the baton of maestro James Conlon. You can find McGraw as Manuel in Falla's La Vida Breve (recorded on Telarc), and as a baritone soloist in Liszt's oratorio St. Stanislaus, which won the International Liszt Competition and is also recorded on the Telarc label. In the summers of 2010 and 2011, he taught at the CCM Spoleto Music Festival in Spoleto, Italy. In the summers of 2013 and 2014, he taught at Opera On The Avalon under the direction of Cheryl Hickman in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In the summers of 2016, 2017, and 2023, McGraw taught in the wonderfully unique art song festival, SongFest, which features influential living composers of song as well as high visibility coaches of art song and is the creation of Rosemary Hyler Ritter.
William McGraw was a CCM faculty member from 1986-2021, and many of his former students have gone on to successful careers in the performing arts. He is very proud to have had former students, bass-baritone Thomas Richards and, recently, soprano Elena Villalón as national winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council competition in New York City. Another former student, soprano Caitlin Lynch, made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2013 as Biancofiori in the Metropolitan Opera’s presentation of Francesca da Rimini. In 2015, McGraw’s former student Amanda Woodbury Bodine made her Metropolitan Opera debut to great acclaim. Recently, there have been others engaging operatic roles in new operas with the Metropolitan Opera.
Additionally, his current and former students have performed in the major opera houses of Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Paris, Mannheim, Freiburg, Salzburg, San Francisco, Houston, Indianapolis, Santa Fe, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cincinnati. Students have also performed in numerous young artist programs such as those of Cincinnati Opera, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Des Moines, Central City, Chautauqua, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, Houston Grand Opera, Merola, Music Academy of the West with Marilyn Horne, Florida Grand, and Chicago Lyric Opera. McGraw is proud to have students teaching in leading universities and colleges in the United States.
William McGraw has been named Omicron Delta Kappa Man of Merit by Baylor University in recognition of outstanding accomplishments.