Daniel Sumegi

Now in the fourth decade of his career, Daniel Sumegi has sung over 100 operatic roles on many of the world’s major stages, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Washington National Opera, and Seattle Opera, as well as at Opera Australia in his home country. He has also appeared in the opera houses of Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg, as well as Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Houston, among many others.

Regarded equally for his dynamic acting as much as his singing, his broad repertoire encompasses all periods of music; from Monteverdi, Mozart and Beethoven to Britten, Maxwell-Davies, Michael Tippett, and Kevin Puts, with a special focus on the Germanic and Slavic composers. Some favorite repertoire includes all of the bass-baritone roles, especially Wotan and Hagen, in Wagner’s Ring cycle.

He has participated in performances of the Ring in New York, Los Angeles, Strasbourg, San Francisco, Cologne, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Seattle, Melbourne, and Adelaide, most notably as Hagen. He has performed Hunding in concert for the Hong Kong, Atlanta, Stuttgart and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras. Additionally, he has bowed as Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier with Welsh National, Scottish and Melbourne Operas, San Francisco and the Metropolitan Opera, Scarpia in Tosca in Washington, Wales, Adelaide, and Knoxville, Jochanaan in Salome in Washington, Hamburg, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Leeds, and Sydney, Boris in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in Nantes and Sydney, and Klingsor in Parsifal in Hamburg, Barcelona, and Adelaide.

The 2021/22 season features Escamillo in Carmen and King Heinrich in Lohengrin, both for Opera Australia in 2022. He also makes company and role debuts as Rocco in Fidelio with Irish National Opera and the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance with Atlanta Opera. 2020/21 engagements included Die Walküre (Singapore), Salome (Victorian Opera) and Bluebeard’s Castle (Opera Australia); in October 2021, he was slated to make his debut as Wotan/The Wanderer in Opera Australia’s new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, before its cancellation due to COVID-19. Other recent engagements include Hunding in Act One of Die Walküre for Atlanta, Stuttgart and Melbourne Symphonies, Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Opera Australia, Jochanaan in Salome for New Israeli Opera, the title role in The Flying Dutchman for Malmö Opera in Sweden, and Zuniga in Carmen for Seattle Opera. He also undertook his musical theater debut as Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd for TEG/Lifelike Touring.

Past highlights include the title role in Bloch’s Macbeth in Frankfurt, Luisa Miller in San Francisco and Sydney, Billy Budd and Rigoletto in Los Angeles, The Flying Dutchman, Aïda, Beatrice and Benedict and The Barber of Seville in Seattle, and Kevin Puts's The Manchurian Candidate in Minnesota and Austin.

Mr. Sumegi has collaborated with noted conductors such as James Conlon, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Dan Ettinger, Asher Fisch, Valery Gergiev, Nicola Luisotti, Sir Charles Mackerras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Renato Palumbo, Sir Simon Rattle, Carlo Rizzi, Donald Runnicles, Nello Santi, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Edo de Waart, Sebastian Weigle, and Simone Young.

Making his debut in 1988, Sumegi participated in San Francisco Opera’s 1991 Merola Program before taking up additional studies at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien in 1991-92. A San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow, Sumegi was a winner of the 1994 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and the 1995 Placido Domingo Operalia, as well as numerous competitions in Australia. He was also a 1995 Sullivan Foundation Grantee.

Mr. Sumegi appears on CD in Beatrice di Tenda and Seattle Opera’s acclaimed Ring cycle, and on DVD in the San Francisco Opera production of Capriccio, Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni, and the historic condensed Ring cycle from Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires.

Learn more at DanielSumegi.com.