For Bass-Baritone, a Welcomed High Note

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Posted on January 8, 2026 by Alumni

Alumni

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THE 2025 INTERNATIONAL OPERA AWARDS Male Singer of the Year has come a long way from the football field at Theodore High School, just south of Mobile. Bass-baritone and former offensive lineman Nicholas Brownlee ’12 has singing engagements booked into 2032.

That means intensive rehearsals and a grinding travel schedule. “If I fly back home on a Monday,” he says, “I don’t think about that next plane flight on Wednesday morning, or I will spiral into a puddle.”
Two things give him the joy that keeps him going: joining his wife, operatic mezzo-soprano Jennifer

Feinstein, in putting young daughters Madeline and Lillian to bed at their home in Frankfurt, Germany — and stepping out onto the stage.

High school music teacher and South alum Karen Combs ’74, M.Ed. ’89, led the choir that focused his interest on music.

“It was like finding my people for the first time,” Brownlee says. “My dark, weird humor was accepted, and my spazzy, crazy, no-filter brain.”

At South, Dr. Thomas Rowell, professor of music, enticed him into the chorus of Giuseppe Verdi’s romantic tragedy “La Traviata.” The $500 performance fee sealed the deal. Says Brownlee,

“The first opera that I ever saw, I was in.”

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