Ms. Montalbano was praised in the press for her work as the alto soloist in Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, one of two different interpretations of the work that will be performed in Philadelphia this February.

Choral Arts gives masterful tour of Rossini piece – David Patrick Stearns for The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 11, 2013

Mezzo-soprano Maren Montalbano, one of four vocal soloists, sang a wonderful “Agnus Dei.”

Choral Arts sings Rossini’s ‘Petite Messe’ – Tom Purdom for Broad Street Review, February 12, 2013

For his soloists, Glandorf recruited experienced early music performers, who absorbed the peculiarities of 19th-Century French style just as they normally master the styles of 18th-Century England or 16th-Century Portugal. Glandorf headed his cast with a world-class early music star, soprano Julianne Baird, but the other three soloists were all A-list vocalists with the strong, supple voices that this mass requires.

One of the evening’s highlights was a trio for mezzo, tenor and baritone that blended three distinctive, richly colored voices singing three distinct, perfectly harmonized melody lines.

…Good as Baird was, she was upstaged by mezzo Maren Montalbano, who followed her with the kind of passionate outcry that pulls opera audiences out of their seats. The soprano may get the hero in operas, but the mezzo got the last word in Rossini’s version of the Mass.