ANGEL BLUE IN RECITAL WITH BRYAN WAGORN

The 2020 recipient of the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman, California-born soprano Angel Blue made her Met debut in 2017 as Mimì in La Bohème and has since returned to sing more than 100 performances of ten roles, including Margarita Xirgu in the company premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, the title role of Aida, Magda in La Rondine, Liù in Turandot, Micaela in Carmen, Violetta in La Traviata, Bess in Porgy and Bess, and Destiny/Loneliness/Greta in the company premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. This season, she reprises her portrayals of Mimì and Liù and also sings Schmitt’s Psalm 47 with the Houston Symphony; Bess at Houston Grand Opera; the title role of Tosca at the Paris Opera; recitals in Palm Beach, Atlanta, New York, Valencia, and Reykjavik; and concerts with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Tonkunstler Orchestra. Her recent past performances include Violetta in Verona and at Houston Grand Opera; Aida at Covent Garden and in concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; the title role of Luisa Miller with Washington Concert Opera; Mimi at the Bavarian State Opera; Tosca at the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, Santa Fe Opera, and LA Opera; and Leonora in Il Trovatore at San Francisco Opera.

Canadian-American pianist Bryan Wagorn serves as Assistant Conductor at The Metropolitan Opera. He has appeared on such television and radio stations as Good Morning America, WQXR and CBC Radio. He regularly performs with the Met Chamber Ensemble in concerts at Carnegie Hall and performed as pianist in the Met’s Grammy-winning productions of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in my Bones and Champion. He recently performed the role of pianist Boleslao Lazinski onstage at the Metropolitan Opera in their 2023 production of Giordano’s Fedora directed by David McVicar, the role having been last performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. As a conductor he collaborated with Angel Blue and the LA Opera on a digital short film with music by David Lang directed by Bill Morrison. He also performed and recorded on the Met Museum’s Cristofori fortepiano, the oldest such instrument in existence. In 2022 he performed in Carnegie Hall’s gala fundraiser for Ukraine in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium along such artists as Angel Blue, Denyce Graves, Isabel Leonard, Midori, and Evgeny Kissin.

Mr. Wagorn has been engaged by summer festivals including Tanglewood, Ravinia, Salzburg, Glyndebourne, Marlboro, Seiji Ozawa’s Matsumoto festival, and has served on the faculties of the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada’s Summer Music Institute, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, and Carnegie Hall's National Youth Orchestra. He has performed with internationally acclaimed artists including Angel Blue, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Lise Davidsen, Joyce DiDonato, Midori, Nadine Sierra, and Pinchas Zukerman.  He has been a guest teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto, the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Glynebourne’s Jerwood Young Artist Program, and the McGill Schulich School of Music. 

He made his solo recital debut at New York's Carnegie Hall in 2009 and has also appeared at the Library of Congress, the United Nations General Assembly, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Teatro di San Carlo in Napoli, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Hamburg Opera, Summer Stage in New York’s Central Park, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and he has also toured extensively with Jeunesses Musicales. He has also performed recitals for the Marilyn Horne Foundation, Richard Tucker Foundation, and George London Foundation. Mr. Wagorn is on the advisory boards of the Hildegard Behrens Foundation and the Bagby Foundation, and serves on faculty at the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He is a graduate of the University of Ottawa, the Mannes College of Music, and the Manhattan School of Music.

Mr. Wagorn is a Steinway artist.

The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world. Each season, the Met stages close to 200 opera performances at its home in the heart of Lincoln Center in New York. More than 750,000 people attend the performances in the opera house, and millions more experience the Met through new media distribution initiatives—including the award-winning Live in HD series of cinema transmissions and the online subscription streaming service Met Opera on Demand—and state-of-the-art technology. Since its founding in 1883, the company has always engaged the world’s most important singers—from stars of the turn of the 20th century like Kirsten Flagstad, Enrico Caruso, and Ezio Pinza to the Golden Age talents of Renata Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, and Luciano Pavarotti to today’s leading international artists—and it continues to discover and train rising voices through its Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition and Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. In 2006, Peter Gelb became the Met’s Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager—the 16th general manager in company history. Under his leadership, the Met has elevated its theatrical standards by significantly increasing the number of new productions, staged by the most imaginative directors working in theater and opera, and has launched a series of initiatives to broaden its reach internationally. Starting with the 2018–19 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin took the musical helm of the company as the Met’s Jeannette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, and during the 2025–26 season, Daniele Rustioni began his tenure as the company’s Principal Guest Conductor.