Samuel Ramey Bass

For over three decades, Samuel Ramey has reigned as one of the music world's foremost interpreters of bass and bass-baritone operatic and concert repertoire. With astounding versatility he commands an impressive breadth of repertoire encompassing virtually every musical style from the fioratura of Argante in Handel's Rinaldo, which was the vehicle of his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut in 1984, to the dramatic proclamations of the title role in Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, which he sang in a new production at the Metropolitan Opera televised by PBS. Mr. Ramey's interpretations embrace the bel canto of Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti; the lyric and dramatic roles of Mozart and Verdi; and the heroic roles of the Russian and French repertoire.

Mr. Ramey's unique talents have afforded the world's leading theaters an opportunity to expand their repertoire and present works written specifically for the bass voice, such as Verdi's Attila, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re, Rossini's Maometto II, and Massenet's Don Quichotte. His repertoire of more than fifty roles also encompasses the more standard repertoire, including Mozart's suave rake, Don Giovanni, for which Newsweek hailed him as "today's perfect, swashbuckling Don;" the title role in the same composer's Le nozze di Figaro, for which one Italian critic described him as "the perfect Mozart singer;" Zaccaria in Nabucco; and Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra. It is from much of this repertoire that Samuel Ramey developed a concert of Great bass arias and scenes with chorus which he has performed throughout the United States. Together with local orchestras and choruses, he presents a program of arias and scenes from Tosca, Mefistofele, Nabucco, Carmen, Susannah, Boris Godunov, and Faust.

Samuel Ramey has appeared on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper, Opéra de Paris, Arena di Verona, Deutsche Oper Berlin, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the operas of Munich, Hamburg, Geneva, Florence, Zürich and Amsterdam, among others. In concert, he has performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, La Scala Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and the symphonies of Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and San Francisco.

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