Exciting Artist Debuts Ahead

Coming to Lyric this fall — four exceptional singers you won’t want to miss!

Just as gardeners love to peruse seed & bulb catalogs, imagining the blooming delights that lie ahead, so do opera fans enjoy poring over new-season brochures to see which wonderful artists they’ll experience in company debuts.

Lyric’s “bouquet” of debut artists is sure to captivate you this fall. Here are just a few to anticipate:

The sensational young American tenor Michael Fabiano will portray Rodolfo in Lyric’s new coproduction of La bohème, in which he triumphed last season at Covent Garden. Declared The Observer of his portrayal at the Met, “The most exciting of all these performers...was tenor Michael Fabiano as the jealous poet Rodolfo. While there is great beauty in his basic timbre, particularly in the middle octave of the voice, his real forte is his ideal mastery of Italianate style....Fabiano’s aggressive attack reminds us that Puccini’s roots were in verismo, realism. He finds in Rodolfo a core of anger and desperation that seems to cry out against social injustice.” 

Rapidly rising star American mezzo-soprano Angela Brower will make her role and company debuts as Idamante, the noble-hearted son of the title character in Mozart’s Idomeneo. She’s made waves in top opera houses around the world (from her adopted home base in Germany) in wide-ranging roles including Cherubino/The Marriage of Figaro, Octavian/Der Rosenkavalier, Orlofsky/Die Fledermaus, the Composer/Ariadne auf Naxos, Nicklausse/The Tales of Hoffmann, Annio and Sesto/La clemenza di Tito, Charlotte/Werther, and Dorabella/Così fan tutte. 

The new production of Siegfried features two exciting German artists appearing at Lyric for the first time — and both in role debuts. Heldentenor Burkhard Fritz will be Lyric’s new Siegfried, “a real Mount Everest for tenors,” as general director Anthony Freud notes; and lyric tenor Matthias Klink will portray Mime, who schemes to do away with the young hero. Fritz studied medicine and voice concurrently in his hometown of Hamburg before committing to opera professionally. His Wagner “cred” is impressive, with acclaimed title-role portrayals of Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tannhäuser, as well as Stolzing in Die Meistersinger, and several additional leading roles in Italian, French, and German repertoire. Klink studied at Indiana University before making a name for himself at major houses throughout Europe and the U.S., especially in Mozart leading roles (Tamino/The Magic Flute, Belmonte/The Abduction from the Seraglio, Ferrando/Così fan tutte, Arbace/Idomeneo). He has portrayed Erik in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

That’s all for now — you can learn more about additional exciting debut artists in the spring and summer editions of Lyric Notes.