With a “heroically shining tone of exceptional clarity and precision” (Opera Magazine) and “gorgeously burnished power” (The New York Times), American tenor Russell Thomas uses his signature elegance and intensity to create vivid character portrayals on the world’s most important stages.
This season Mr. Thomas returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin for two Verdi roles: the title-role in Don Carlo and Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino. He will also return to the Cincinnati Opera as Cavaradossi in Tosca. In concert he is heard in an opera gala with the Atlanta Symphony and in a virtual presentation by the Dallas Opera of Janacek’s The Diary of One Who Vanished. Future projects include returns to the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Canadian Opera Company, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Los Angeles Opera and the Houston Grand Opera.
Last season featured two much-anticipated Verdi role debuts. Russell Thomas opened the season with his first Don Alvaro in a new Frank Castorf production of La Forza del Destino at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and subsequently made his role and house debuts as Radames in Houston Grand Opera’s new Phelim McDermott production of Aida. He returned to the Washington National Opera as the title character in Verdi’s iconic Otello and joined Gianandrea Noseda and the Wiener Symphoniker at the Vienna Konzerthaus for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, reprising this piece on tour with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Andris Nelsons in Hamburg and Munich.
Mr. Thomas is an alumnus of the young artist programs at the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and has received prizes from the George London Foundation for Singers, Liederkranz Foundation, Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation, and Richard Tucker Music Foundation. In 2010, he swept the Grand Prize, Audience Prize, and Tenor Prize of the Francisco Viñas Competition in Barcelona, Spain.