Trained in the art of “cultivated screaming” (aka classical, operatic singing), Holly’s primary teachers include international sopranos Benita Valente, Sharon Sweet and Barbara Honn; conductor Harold Evans and Metropolitan opera director Marc Lewis. A coloratura with a personality somewhere between a contemplative bass-baritone and firey, rebellious spinto soprano, favorite roles include: Zerbinetta, Cunnegonde, Morgana, Queen of the Night, Madame Herz (The Impresario), Marie (Fille du Regiment) and La Fee in Cendrillon. Like many American musicians, she holds up Leonard Bernstein as a musical and intellectual hero and was honored to perform the role of Maria on the South American tour of West Side Story during the composer’s 90th birthday celebration. As a performer she has toured Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Canada, Germany and the Czech Republic singing in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and Smetna Hall (Prague) to Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and New York’s Koch theater.
A disciplined student of technique as well as iconoclast by nature, Caracappa is most at home in theatrical, cabaret settings where she can infuse her own (mis)musings and creative riffs onto the music and poetry that inspires and shapes her. Committed to the rigor of classical music in the sphere of salon song, she brings intellect, quirky humor and cosmic ebullience to the contemporary cabaret space which she sees as the future of embodied philosophy in the age of digital reproduction.