Metropolitan opera singer Chad Shelton to sing Christmas Eve

A former member of the Chancel Choir at First United Methodist Church in Orange, Chad Shelton will sing at the Candlelight service on Christmas Eve. The service will take place in the First United Methodist Church Sanctuary at 502 N.6th Street in Orange at 5:30pm.

Chad Shelton, who will be making his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2015, left Orange to major in music at LSU and graduate studies at Yale. Shelton studied voice with Robert Grayson at Louisiana State University, and then at Yale University on the graduate level. He made his professional opera debut in 1994 while still at LSU as Tamino in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Zauberflöte with Baton Rouge Opera. In 1998 Shelton became a member of the Young Artist Program at the Houston Grand Opera, remaining in the program through 2000.

Although Shelton's career has continued to be largely based at the HGO, he has performed with numerous opera companies throughout the United States. He made his international opera debut in 2000 with Opera Australia as Belmonte in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. This was followed by his European debut in 2002 as Mitch in André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire at Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg. In 2005 he made his debut with the Opéra national de Lorraine as Tamino.