JOHN STEPHENS

John Stephens maintains an active career as an opera and concert singer and stage director. He has sung leading roles with numerous opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera; Houston Grand Opera; Santa Fe Opera; Washington Opera; Opera Theatre of St. Louis; Minnesota Opera; Atlanta Opera; Opera Pacific; Pittsburgh Opera Theatre; Boston Lyric Opera; Glimmerglass Opera; Opera Omaha; and the Kansas City Lyric Opera. He has directed Benjamin Britten’s operas Albert Herring, The Turn of the Screw, and The Rape of Lucretia, Carlyle Floyd’s Susannah and Of Mice and Men, and many other works.

As director of the voice program at the University of Kansas, he has taught voice and directed operas for the past 26 years. Mr. Stephens directed and sang in WGO’s productions of The Mikado in 2004 and The Pirates of Penzance in 2008. As concert soloist he has sung with the St. Louis Symphony; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Atlanta Symphony; Orlando Philharmonic; Kansas City Symphony; and at the J. F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is also principal bass soloist for the Bach Aria Group.

Stephens has recorded for Columbia Masterworks, Newport Classics and the Musical Heritage Society. He holds a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Illinois, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Hamburg, Germany. Mr. Stephens received advanced training at the Juilliard School of Music, where he was a member of the American Opera Center.