ABOUT
John Viscardi is a Philadelphia singer bringing back the golden age of the Italian-American crooner, with a voice trained for the opera house and heard from Carnegie Hall to Tokyo Opera City.
Some weeks his calendar reads like a dare: Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus at Florida Grand Opera one weekend, a packed Philadelphia nightclub the next, and the national anthem for 35,000 Phillies fans in between. He has sung at Lincoln Center, with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Marian Anderson Hall and with Santa Fe Opera, and has worked with the Metropolitan Opera on the workshop of a new opera. Back home, you’ll find him under the lights at Midnight & The Wicked, the 1920s-style speakeasy in Center City, and at clubs across the city.
It all started at home. John grew up on Long Island in a family of music lovers, with Mario Lanza records playing at his grandmother’s house and Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Prima and Rosemary Clooney on his mom’s stereo.
On his new holiday EP, The Duke of December, he’s joined by the Philly Pops for five songs that bring back the Christmas we remember and love. On Winter Wonderland, John trades lines with Philly soul house vocalist Lady Alma in a swinging, joyful duet, and Ron Kerber’s saxophone lights up both Winter Wonderland and White Christmas. Then the full orchestra takes over for Schubert’s Ave Maria and O Holy Night.
At the heart of the record is The Gift of Love, a song no one has heard before. Marylyn Varriale, John’s choral director at Manhasset High School, wrote it half a century ago and never released it. When she shared it with him in 2025, he fell in love with it the first time he played it at the piano and asked if he could record it. The Duke of December is its first recording: a gift from a teacher to her student, and now from both of them to listeners.
On the opera stage, 2026 brought Eisenstein at Florida Grand Opera, Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande with Opera Baltimore, Marco in Chadwick’s The Padrone with Odyssey Opera in Boston, and Cavaradossi in Act II of Tosca in concert with Protestra Orchestra in New York. Earlier seasons have taken him to New York City Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Carolina, Detroit Opera and more. He is a winner of the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition and the Concorso Internazionale F.P. Tosti.
Critics have praised “the fullness of Viscardi’s sound” (OperaWire, Tosca) and written that “his robust singing is outdone only by his near-maniacal acting ability” (The Toledo Blade, The Magic Flute). The Charlotte Observer said he “brought both swagger and depth of feeling to the role of Cyrano.”
Celebrate the season with John and Lady Alma live at the Fallser Club, a 1920s movie house turned music room in East Falls, on December 13. Get tickets.
His 2025 debut album, Amore, reimagined the songs he grew up on, released on The Giving Groove, a nonprofit label that gives half its proceeds to music education. Off stage, he co-founded ArtSmart, which has provided more than 60,000 free music lessons to students in under-resourced communities. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Molly and their two children.