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Puerto Rican baritone
RICARDO JOSÉ RIVERA
, a first-year member of Lyric’s Ryan Opera
Center, makes his Lyric mainstage debut this season as Schaunard/
La bohème
and will later sing
Baron Douphol/
La traviata
. Rivera has portrayed Guglielmo/
Così fan tutte
at the International
Vocal Academy of Rome; sung several recitals with the American Masters of Opera Academy
in Moscow; and performed in scene and concert presentations as a participant in Tel-Aviv’s
International Vocal Arts Institute. He has had repeat engagements at the Performing Arts Center
of San Juan and at the University of Puerto Rico Theater, including
Don Pasquale
,
Gianni Schicchi
and Don Quixote/Ravel’s
Master Peter’s Puppet Show
(part of the 2016 Casals Festival). Rivera
recently earned his master’s degree at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music (
The Barber of Seville, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, Gianni Schicchi
). He has also participated in numerous summer programs, including VOICExperience
and the Aspen Music Festival.
Ricardo José Rivera is sponsored by
Dr. David H. Whitney and Dr. Juliana Chyu
and
Drs. Joan and Russ Zajtchuk
.
Mexican tenor
MARIO ROJAS,
a second-year member of Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center, made
his Lyric debut last season in
Rigoletto
and appears this season in
La bohème, Il trovatore
, and
La
traviata
. Rojas is an alumnus of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he was heard
as Don José/
La tragédie de Carmen
, Nemorino/
L’elisir d’amore,
and in the SFCM Gala. One of
the youngest singers ever to receive the Plácido Domingo scholarship from SIVAM (Mexico’s
most prominent young-artist program), he has performed at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas
Artes as Rodolfo/
La bohème
. In 2015 Rojas received the Marta Eggerth Kiepura Award in the
Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation International Vocal Completion, third place in the Palm
Springs Opera Guild Competition, the Emerging Singers Award in the Opera Index Vocal Competition, and an
Encouragement Award from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Western District Auditions. More recent
competition awards include third place in the 2018 Dallas Opera International Vocal Competition, and winner in the
2018 MONC Central District.
Mario Rojas is sponsored by the
Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation
.
Romanian bass
ADRIAN SÂMPETREAN
, who has made acclaimed appearances at Lyric as
Raimondo/
Lucia di Lammermoor
(2016/17) and Giorgio/
I puritani
(2017/18), returns this season as
Colline/
La bohème
. He began his career at the National Opera in his hometown Cluj-Napoca.
Guest engagements followed at the Opéra de Monte Carlo (Dulcamara/
L’elisir d’amore
); the
Opéra National de Paris, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf-Duisburg, and the state
operas in Hamburg and Munich (as Alidoro/
Cinderella
); La Scala (title role/Verdi’s
Oberto
, Banco/
Macbeth
); the Verona Arena (Ramfis/
Aida
); the Aix-en-Provence Festival (Selim /
Il turco in Italia
);
Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera (Lord Sidney/
Il viaggio a Reims
); Palermo’s Teatro Massimo (Don
Basilio/
The Barber of Seville
); and the Opéra de Bordeaux (Philip II /
Don Carlo
). Sâmpetrean appeared in the title role/
Don Giovanni
at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and he has sung Leporello in the same opera at the Salzburg Festival
and in Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Paris, Monte Carlo, and Hamburg. He will be featured later this season as Count
Walter/
Luisa Miller
in Monte Carlo, Alidoro in Rome, and Leporello at France’s Chorégies d’Orange Festival.
Soprano
ANN TOOMEY
, a Michigan native and a third-year Ryan Opera Center Ensemble
member, debuted at Lyric as the First Lady/
The Magic Flute
(2016/17 season) and returns to the
company’s mainstage this season as the Fifth Maid/
Elektra
. Last season she performed alongside
tenor Lawrence Brownlee in the Harris Theater’s
Beyond the Aria
recital series. Toomey recently
earned a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
(Fiordiligi/
Così fan tutte
, Boonyi/Jack Perla’s
Shalimar the Clown
for studio production, soprano
soloist/Brahms’s German Requiem). She was a member of the 2015 Gerdine Young Artist
program at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (Gabrielle/La rondine). Toomey holds a bachelor of
music degree in vocal performance and music education from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan (Despina/
Così fan tutte
, Nella/
Gianni Schicchi
, soprano soloist in choral works of Beethoven and Haydn). The soprano was a 2016
national semifinalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and an award recipient in the 2015 Corbett
Opera Scholarship Competition at UCC-CM.
Ann Toomey is sponsored by
The Susan and Richard P. Kiphart
Family, Richard O. Ryan,
and
Richard W. Shepro and Lindsay E. Roberts.