Otello

With a “heroically shining tone of exceptional clarity and precision” (Opera magazine) and “gorgeously burnished power” (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.

His engagements for the 2021/22 season include his return to LA Opera as Radames in Aida, Florestan in Fidelio with San Francisco Opera, Cavaradossi in Tosca with Cincinnati Opera, Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the title role of Otello at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Appearances in the 2022/23 season will include the title role of Ernani with Lyric Opera of Chicago and Calaf in Turandot with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

He opened the truncated 2019/20 season with his role debut as Don Alvaro in a new 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 production of Aida. He also returned to Washington National Opera as the title character in Otello. On the concert stage, he joined Gianandrea Noseda at the Vienna Konzerthaus for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.  (Engagements cancelled due to the pandemic included leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and Canadian Opera Company.)

The 2018/19 season featured Mr. Thomas’s hotly anticipated stage debut in Verdi’s iconic Otello, seen at the Canadian Opera Company after concert performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He sang Manrico in Il Trovatore at the Bavarian State Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, made his role debut as Roberto Devereux at San Francisco Opera, and brought his celebrated Titus in The Clemency of Titus to LA Opera. On the concert stage, he joined the World Orchestra for Peace in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the BBC Proms, and performed Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He closed his season by reuniting with conductor Teodor Currentzis and director Peter Sellars for a new Idomeneo at the Salzburger Festspiele.

American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen is known for her diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart to Wagner. A regular guest at the leading opera houses around the world, she opened the 2021/22 season with a concert in San Francisco. This season finds her performing three roles at the Vienna State Opera: a role debut as Desdemona in Otello, followed by a return to the role of Marguerite in Faust and a holiday celebration performing Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. Returning to the Semperoper Dresden, she then performs Mimì in La Bohème. In the spring, she performs the role of Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes at the Bavarian State Opera, Elsa in Lohengrin at the Frankfurt Opera, and the title role in Rusalka with NDR Hamburg. On the concert stage, she performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in Santa Cecilia, Rome, and a solo Strauss program in Paris with the Orchestre National de France.

Engagements for the 2022/23 season will include Elisabeth in the original five-act French version of Don Carlos with Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Previous engagements included Rusalka (Rusalka) at the San Francisco Opera, Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier) at Glyndebourne, Semperoper Dresden and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden,  Violetta (La Traviata) at Opéra national de Bordeaux, Marguerite (Faust) as part of the Royal Opera House’s tour of Japan, Elsa (Lohengrin) at Deutsche Oper Berlin and Opernhaus Zurich, Mimi (La Bohème) at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Countess (The Marriage of Figaro) at the Metropolitan Opera and the Wiener Staatsoper, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Wiener Staatsoper, Houston Grand Opera and Semperoper Dresden, Hélène (Les Vêpres Siciliennes) at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Valentine (Les Huguenots) at the Grand Théâtre Genève, Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) at the San Francisco Opera and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Staatskapelle Dresden, Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) at the Houston Grand Opera, Leonore (Fidelio) at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and Leonora (Il Trovatore) at the Teatro Regio di Torino and Gran Teatre del Liceu. 

Equally at home on the concert stage, she has performed Strauss’s Four Last Songs multiple times, including notably at Buckingham Palace, and joined Jonas Kaufmann in 2019 and 2020 for a multi-city European tour in support of his latest recording, Wien, on which she is featured. Other repertoire includes Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,  Mahler’s Second, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies, Mendelssohn’s Elias, Dvořák's Stabat Mater, and the Verdi Requiem. 

Rachel was a member of the ensemble at the Dresdner Semperoper for three years, where she sang the title role in The Merry Widow, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Vitellia in La Clemenza di Tito, Elettra in Idomeneo, Diemut in Feuersnot, Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus and Mimi in La Bohème. She won first prize at the 2014 Operalia competition in Los Angeles and at the 2011 Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, and she was a winner of the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She holds both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Brigham Young University and is an alumna of the Houston Grand Opera Studio. An active presence on social media, she can be found on Instagram and Facebook @rachewillissorensen and on Twitter under @RWSing.

Learn more at RachelWillisSorensen.com.

Russian baritone Igor Golovatenko quickly made a name for himself on both the concert platform and operatic stage after his debut in the 2006 Russian premiere of Delius' <em>Eine Messe des Lebens</em> with the Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Having studied at the Moscow Academy of the Choral Arts with Dmitry Vdovin, Mr. Golovatenko was awarded first prize at the St. Petersburg Three Centuries of Classical Romance Competition and second prize at Dresden's International Competizione dell'Opera. A leading baritone at the Bolshoi Opera, Igor Golovatenko will return there this season as Shchelkalov in Boris Godunov, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Lescaut in Manon Lescaut, Rodrigo in Don Carlo, and Robert in Iolanta. He has previously appeared at the Bolshoi as Germont in La Traviata, Posa in Don Carlo and Marcello in La Boheme.

In recent seasons, he has made a number of significant debuts: Severo in Donizetti's Poliuto at the Glyndebourne Festival, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Guy de Montfort in Les Vêpres Siciliennes at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and Count di Luna in Il Trovatore at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. This season, he will also debut at the Salzburg Festival as Prince Yeletsky in The Queen of Spades, appear at the Opéra de Bordeaux as Ernesto in Il Pirata, and sing Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 at the BBC Wales’s Proms in the Park.

His appearances in the 2022/23 season will include Rodrigue in the original five-act French version of Don Carlos with Lyric Opera of Chicago. Future engagements also include his debut at the Metropolitan Opera.

Morris Robinson is considered one the most interesting and sought-after basses performing today.

A Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions 2019 National Semifinalist, the tenor is drawing attention for his Italianate sound and compelling stage presence. In addition to his appearances with LA Opera, his engagements for the 2021/22 season include creating the role of Giorgio in New York City Opera's world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.

In the summer of 2021, he performed Tamino in The Magic Flute at the Aspen Music Festival, under the baton of Patrick Summers.

He spent the summers of 2018 and 2019 as an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera, where he covered the role of Lindoro in L’Italiana in Algeri and performed the role of Toke in the world premiere of The Thirteenth Child.

Mr. Ciaramitaro is a former Cornelia T. Bailey Apprentice Artist at Palm Beach Opera, and a former Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artist with Arizona Opera, where he appeared as Theseus in Patrick Morganelli’s Hercules vs. Vampires, Spoletta in Tosca, the Governor and Vanderdendur in Candide, and Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. Mr. Ciaramitaro performed the role of Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola as a member of the prestigious Merola Opera Program in 2017, and spent previous seasons as a studio artist with Chautauqua Opera and Wolf Trap Opera, where he performed the roles of Don Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro and the Messenger in Aïda.

While working toward a Masters in Music at Florida State University under the direction of Douglas Fisher and voice teacher David Okerlund, Mr. Ciaramitaro performed the roles of Alfredo in La Traviata, Charles II in Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players, and Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola. Mr. Ciaramitaro earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rollins College and studied with tenor Richard Owens.

In concert, Mr. Ciaramitaro has performed Orff’s Carmina Burana and Haydn’s The Creation with the Tallahassee Community Chorus, and was the tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah at the Crystal Cathedral and with the Messiah Choral Society of Winter Park and the Villages Philharmonic.

Since his debut that year with La Traviata, he has conducted 66 different operas and more than 420 performances to date with the company. Highlights of recent seasons include the 2020 company premiere of The Anonymous Lover (L'Amant Anonyme) by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and the 2021 company premiere of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex.

(Click here to visit James Conlon's Corner, where you can find essays, videos and conversations he has created especially for LA Opera.)

One of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire. He has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra since his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1974. He has conducted more than 270 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Through worldwide touring, an extensive discography and videography, numerous essays and commentaries, frequent television appearances and guest speaking engagements, Mr. Conlon is one of classical music’s most recognized interpreters.

In September 2021, he became Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

He has been Principal Conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy (2016–20); Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera (1995–2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989–2003), simultaneously leading the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera; and Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (1983–91).

Mr. Conlon has served as the Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony (2005–15), and is now Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival―the oldest choral festival in the United States―where he was Music Director for 37 years (1979–2016), marking one of the longest tenures of any director of an American classical music institution. As a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he has led more than 270 performances since his 1976 debut. He has also conducted at leading opera houses and festivals including the Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Mariinsky Theatre, Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

As LA Opera's Music Director since 2006, Mr. Conlon has led more performances than any other conductor in the company’s history—to date, over 420 performances of more than 60 different operas by over 20 composers. Highlights of his LA Opera tenure include conducting the company’s first Ring cycle, recently re-aired in a marathon webcast celebrating the performances’ tenth anniversary; initiating the groundbreaking Recovered Voices series, an ongoing commitment to staging masterpieces of 20^th-century European opera that were suppressed by the Third Reich; and spearheading Britten 100/LA, a city-wide celebration honoring the centennial of that composer’s birth. During the period in which Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was closed due to the pandemic, Mr. Conlon conducted LA Opera’s live-streamed, socially distanced production—staged at the Colburn School—of The Anonymous Lover by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a prominent Black composer in 18^th-century France. The performance was presented as an online-only event in fall 2020 and marked the work’s West Coast premiere. The Pavilion reopened in June 2021 with Mr. Conlon conducting the company premiere of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, with which LA Opera became the first major American opera company to perform live in its own theater since the coronavirus outbreak. The performance was subsequently released online for at-home viewing. During LA Opera’s 2021/22 season, Mr. Conlon conducts three operas long absent from the company’s repertory: Verdi’s Il Trovatore, which opens the season; Wagner’s Tannhäuser; and Verdi’s Aida. He also conducts John Neumeier’s ballet adaptation of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, performed at LA Opera for the first time.

John Cox is recognized as one of the world's major opera directors. For many years, he was director of productions for Glyndebourne, where he directed works by Mozart, Rossini and Haydn, a celebrated Rake’s Progress with David Hockney’s designs, and a notable group of Richard Strauss domestic comedies: Ariadne auf Naxos, Capriccio, Intermezzo, Die schweigsame Frau, Der Rosenkavalier and Arabella. He subsequently was artistic director of Scottish Opera  and production director for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

His opera productions have been seen throughout Europe, North America and Australia, and he has also worked extensively in theater, television, film and major festivals. Recent productions include The Marriage of Figaro for Garsington Opera, Thaïs for the Metropolitan Opera and Cosi fan tutte for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Johan Engels (1952-2014) was renowned internationally for his work in opera, theater and ballet. His designs for The Passenger have been integral to the success of Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera—first in its world stage premiere at the 2010 Bregenz Festival and subsequently in London, Warsaw, Houston (American premiere), New York, Chicago, Detroit and Miami. In addition to his Bregenz productions, highlights of Engels’s operatic career included productions for London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Arne’s Artaxerxes), the Zurich Opera House (such rarities as Johann Strauss II’s Simplicius, Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re, and Chabrier’s L’étoile), the Opéra de Marseille (Ring cycle), LA Opera (L’Elisir d’Amore, also seen in Madrid, Geneva, and Graz), the Salzburg Festival (Turandot), Welsh National Opera (Khovanshchina, Lulu, Don Carlos, the latter coproduced with Houston Grand Opera), the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Opéra National de Paris, Opera North, and Finnish National Opera, among many other companies. In British theater, the designer was associated with the Donmar Warehouse (including David Leveaux’s production of Sophocles’s Electra, which transferred to Broadway), Royal Shakespeare Company, Almeida Theatre, and Chichester Festival.

Among his final projects, he had designed a new Ring cycle for Lyric Opera of Chicago; the first three Ring operas premiered there posthumously between 2016 and 2018.