Bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee is the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, First Prize winner of the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, winner of the Zarzuela Prize at Operalia, and Grand Prize Winner of The Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition.
In the 25/26 season, Brownlee makes debuts at Lyric Opera of Chicago in Salome (Jochanaan) and with Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería for a recording of Salome (Jochanaan). He returns to Bayerische Staatsoper for a new production of Die Walküre (Wotan) directed by Calixto Bieito, Bayreuther Festspiele in Der fliegende Holländer (title role), Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía for Salome (Jochanaan), and to Oper Frankfurt in Peter Grimes (Captain Balstrode), Tosca (Scarpia), and Tristan und Isolde (Kurwenal). On the concert stage, he debuts with the Houston Symphony for Act II of Tristan und Isolde (Kurwenal & Melot), returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and appears on the 2025 Richard Tucker Gala.
Future seasons include debuts with Teatro Real, Teatro Colón, and Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as returns to Gran Teatre del Liceu, Bayerische Staatsoper, Oper Frankfurt, Bayreuther Festspiele, and Opernhaus Zürich.
Brownlee has performed at many of the world’s leading opera houses including The Metropolitan Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Wiener Staatsoper, Dutch National Opera, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Oper Frankfurt, Opernhaus Zürich, Bayerische Staatsoper, The Santa Fe Opera, Teatro de São Carlos, LA Opera, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Bayreuther Festspiele, Oper Leipzig, Irish National Opera, the Dallas Opera, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, The Atlanta Opera, and Bard SummerScape. He has worked with a diverse group of conductors, among them Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Susanna Mälkki, Pablo Heras-Casado, Kent Nagano, James Conlon, Emmanuel Villaume, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Thomas Guggeis, Carlo Rizzi, Harry Bicket, Vladimir Jurowski, Eun Sun Kim, Fabio Luisi, Gemma New, Giacomo Sagripanti, James Gaffigan, Marco Armiliato, Sebastian Weigle, Tarmo Peltokoski, Simone Young, Speranza Scappucci, and Erik Nielsen.
His wide-ranging operatic repertoire includes Das Rheingold (Wotan & Donner), Die Walküre (Wotan), Faust (Méphistophélès), Tristan und Isolde (Kurwenal), Simon Boccanegra (Paolo), Carmen (Escamillo), Parsifal (Amfortas), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Hans Sachs), the title roles in Macbeth, Król Roger, Bluebeard’s Castle, and Der fliegende Holländer, as well as roles in La bohème (Colline), Anna Bolena (Enrico), Le nozze di Figaro (Figaro), Fidelio (Don Pizarro), Don Giovanni (Title Role & Leporello), Fedora (De Siriex), Oedipus Rex (Kreon), Die Frau ohne Schatten (Der Geisterbote), Les contes d’Hoffmann (Villains), Alcina (Melisso), Roméo et Juliette (Frère Laurent), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bottom), and Das Wunder der Heliane (Porter).
On the concert stage, he has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, and Prague Philharmonia. His concert repertoire includes Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, Dvořák’s Te Deum, Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Beethoven’s Mass in C, Choral Fantasy and Missa solemnis, Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, and Stravinsky’s Les Noces.
Brownlee began his professional career as a member of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at LA Opera, where he appeared in Les pêcheurs de perles (Nourabad), Die Zauberflöte (Sprecher), Madama Butterfly (Bonze), and Moby-Dick (Captain Gardiner) and is a graduate of the University of South Alabama and Rice University.
2025-2026
