A Metropolitan Opera company member since his debut in 1995, GRAMMY® Award-winning bass Richard Bernstein has appeared with the MET in 539 performances and 125 international live broadcasts to date, including 24 Live in HD performances broadcast in cinemas worldwide. He has also sung leading roles with companies around the country and around the world during his 30-year career.
Mr. Bernstein once again returns to the Metropolitan Opera for his 29th season. He will perform the roles of Angelotti in Tosca, 2nd Armored Man in The Magic Flute-Holiday Presentation, and 1st Priest and 2nd Armored Man in Die Zauberflöte. He will also be featured as 2nd Soldier in the Met's new production Salome, which will broadcast May 17 for Live in HD. Mr. Bernstein will also be covering roles in Les Contes d'Hoffmann and The Queen of Spades.
In Mr. Bernstein’s 28th season with the Metropolitan Opera, he made role debuts such as the Bonze in Madama Butterfly and the Duke of Verona in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. He also appeared in the Live in HD performance of Roméo et Juliette.
The 2022-23 season saw him celebrate his 500th performance at the Met – on New Year’s Eve – as Boroff in Fedora, along with performances of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Dialogues des Carmélites. He concluded the 2022-23 season singing Lodovico in Act III of Verdi’s Otello with Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at New York’s Carnegie Hall. He then joined the same forces on a European tour (June-July 2023) that kicked off at the Philharmonie de Paris, followed by performances at the Barbican Centre in London and at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany.
Highlights of recent seasons include celebrating his silver anniversary with the Met in 2019-20; role debuts as Pistola in Falstaff and as Foltz in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Met, along with a return in 2021-22 to the role of Aye in the sensational, Grammy Award-winning Met production of Akhnaten; Tosca at the prestigious Bravo! Vail Festival; the bass soloist part in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New Jersey Choral Society; a return to his touchstone role of Leporello in Don Giovanni at Chautauqua Opera; and his Opera Maine debut as Daland in Der fliegende Holländer in July 2022.
Mr. Bernstein’s versatility is displayed in the diverse mix of repertoire he has performed and covered over the years with the Metropolitan Opera, running the gamut from classic operas to contemporary works, in languages as varied as Czech, French, German, Italian, Sanskrit, Russian, and English. These include roles in Faust, Satyagraha, Das Rheingold, Siegfried, La bohème, Simon Boccanegra, Die Zauberflöte, Tosca, Hamlet, From the House of the Dead, Armida, Ariadne auf Naxos, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Ernani, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, War and Peace, Macbeth, A View From the Bridge, and Wozzeck.
Mr. Bernstein has also performed leading roles around the country and abroad. In particular, he has performed his signature roles of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) and Leporello (Don Giovanni) worldwide. In the 2014-15 season, Mr. Bernstein debuted the role of Prince Gremin in Eugene Onegin at Chautauqua Opera. The 2012-13 season saw him garner warm praise for his first leading Wagnerian role: Daland in Der fliegende Holländer at the Princeton Festival. That year also included successful debuts as Tiresias in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (Cincinnati May Festival) and Herod in Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ (at Carnegie Hall). In 2011-12, he returned to LA Opera – the company of his operatic debut – to sing Superintendent Budd in Albert Herring under Maestro James Conlon’s baton.