Nicholas Brownlee

Nicholas Brownlee spent the summers of 2014 and 2015 as a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Singer. In addition to the choruses of Carmen, Le Rossignol, Dr. Sun Yat -sen, Cold Mountain, Rigoletto, and Daughter of the Regiment, he was the First Soldier in Salome and Don Fernando in Fidelio. Since then, he has returned to our stage in 2022 as Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde and in 2021 in the title role of The Marriage of Figaro and as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We will welcome him back to the Santa Fe Opera on July 1, 2023, when he sings the role of the Dutchman in The Flying Dutchman. The production runs through August 25. Mr. Brownlee will share the stage with two other alumni of our Apprentice Singer program, Richard Trey Smagur and Bille Bruley.

Following a three-year stint in the Domingo-Colburn-Stein program for young artists at the Los Angeles Opera where he worked under the baton of James Conlon, he joined the company at the Badische Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany.  He returned to the LA Opera in 2019 to sing the role of Colline in La bohème, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. He has taken this role on to several houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, and the Wiener Staatsoper in Vienna. Additionally, he has sung principal roles at the Dallas Opera, the Dutch National Opera, Opernhaus Zurich and was a member of the company at Oper Frankfurt, where he sang the title roles in Bluebeard’s Castle and King Roger, as well as principal assignments in Salome, Oedipus Rex, Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Fedora. 

Mr. Brownlee maintains a busy concert schedule. He has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony, and Cincinnati Symphony.

A bass-baritone, Nicholas Brownlee is the grand prize winner of the Met Opera’s National Council Auditions, the first prize winner of the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, and a winner of the Zarzuela prize at Operalia.

Thank you to Yoko Arthur, co-founder of The Wagner Society of Santa Fe, who shared a short greeting from Nicholas Brownlee that she filmed in Munich after his performance in Penderecki’s Die Teufel von Loudun. To visit Nicholas Brownlee’s website follow this LINK.