Orig­i­nally from South Bend, Ind., Tony Kalil began singing when he was 7, land­ing a lead role in a school musi­cal and con­tin­u­ing to sing in school choirs. In 1999, dur­ing the sum­mer between his junior and senior year, he stud­ied at the renowned Inter­lochen Cen­ter for the Arts in north­ern Michi­gan, where — at 17 — he sang his first opera, the role of Thomas in “Iolanthe.”

After grad­u­at­ing from high school in Iowa, he attended Wart­burg Col­lege in Iowa on a vocal per­for­mance scholarship.