Born into a family of opera singers in Stuttgart, Germany, baritone Justin Austin has appeared on stages across the globe since the tender age of 4. Now, after making his Los Angeles Opera debut last November as Mercutio in Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, he returns to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the role of Guglielmo in the company’s upcoming production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which runs March 8–30.
At 34, Austin is riding a wave that began with performances as a boy soprano. An alumnus of the Choir Academy of Harlem, he went on to graduate from the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts before earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Manhattan School of Music.
Austin made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2022 as Marcellus in the company premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet and later returned as Ned Keene in Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. As the Kennedy Center’s 2023–2024 Marian Anderson Vocal Award winner, the baritone was featured in recital at the venue last season.
Austin is a champion of new music and has starred as Charles in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Young Emile in the same composer’s Champion, both at Lyric Opera of Chicago. The baritone will be reconnecting with Blanchard and other collaborators to perform selections from the two operas on April 6 at The Soraya in Northridge, an evening in collaboration with LA Opera.
SF Classical Voice caught up with the Philadelphia-based baritone by phone, discussing topics that ranged from his preparation process and his mentors to his attraction to new operas.
Given that your parents, uncles, and aunts are all opera singers, was your operatic path predestined?
Some would say so. People who grew up around me and who knew my parents, they’re never surprised to see what’s happening with me. [But] I don’t necessarily think [my career was fated]. I have an older sister … yet she didn’t go down this path. I feel lucky, privileged, and honored to have been nurtured [in this life after being] bitten by the opera bug.
How did you transition from boy soprano to baritone?
When my voice changed, I was 12, [and] it was catastrophic. I went through every voice part you could think of — soprano to alto to tenor — and dropped down to bass-baritone and eventually settled somewhere in the middle: a high lyric baritone. It’s a combination of a lot of things. My father [Michael Austin] is a tenor, my mother [Alteouise DeVaughn] is a mezzo-soprano, and I sang bass in choir. I’m able to use all of those experiences in my world of being a baritone.
Così fan tutte is your first time singing under LA Opera Music Director James Conlon. How are you enjoying the experience?
James Conlon is absolutely brilliant. I’m drawn to his attention to detail and his specificity. Lots of conductors kind of allow you to be free and make your own decisions and mistakes — do your own thing — but once you get to the stage, [you end up having to go back and] fine-tune. I appreciate that he’s doing the nitpicking on the front end. We can get to where we all want to be, and by the time we get to the stage, we can focus on the transition [there] and not worry about a bunch of musical notes we could have handled before.
This is also your first time tackling the role of Guglielmo. What’s your process for preparing a role — with both classical and new works?
My process doesn’t differ between contemporary and standard repertory, especially at this point in my career. I’m still relatively at the beginning, [and] everything is new. Whether it’s Mozart or a living composer, it’s probably the first time I’m doing it.
The first role I ever repeated was Mercutio, which I first sang with Washington National Opera in 2023. It was interesting because I felt like I had the opportunity to revisit [the part], rethink some things, walk with it even further. It didn’t feel like me doing something over again; it felt like I was continuing with it.
[As for] my process, it’s really a combination of research, music, learning on my own, sitting down at the piano and slowly going through the piece, trying to get it in my voice. If [the role is in] a foreign language, I sit down with the text and do my word-for-word translations and try to get with someone from that culture to understand the nuances of the language.
Being able to understand those intricacies when I actually get in the room [means that] I know what the intention of the composer, the librettist, the director is, what they’re going to ask of me. Even though the composer and librettist aren’t [literally] in the room with us, there are specific intentions they have for each character, and I do the research.
Obviously, with contemporary opera, the composer and librettist are available to you.
That’s the advantage, yes. Singing and participating in the world of contemporary opera, you have the composer right in front of you in rehearsal. You’re able to collaborate, tailor things to you — to your talent, your artistry. And a lot of the time, they’re flexible. [Historically] composers made changes to their pieces [depending on the specific] singers. It’s no different with contemporary composers. And what’s special [is] when I’m in the room, I get to be one of the first to actually do the piece. I get to be part of the decision-making.
What else about contemporary operas appeals to you?
Because of my parents [and] also because of my training — it’s different [for students] now — we studied traditional repertory, the classics. It was always what I was expected to do. It also was what I grew up obsessing over. When you’re starting out, just like with any job, it’s hard to get [established].
The [nice] thing about contemporary music, on a practical level at the beginning, is you’re on equal footing because no one’s done these pieces before. Opera is a business, like any other, where experience matters. When you’re trying to get your first job — no matter how wonderful your audition is — [casting directors] put up your resume against someone who’s done [the role] many times. When you’re auditioning for contemporary music … the audition process is a little bit fairer and geared toward, “Who do we think fits the bill the best based on the audition, not a resume?” My first few jobs out of school were contemporary operas.
New music was a means to an end, [but] then I fell in love with the process. I was able to discover this creative part of me that I didn’t know existed. As an opera singer, you’re [often] carrying on traditions of other artists and not creating characters yourself. But you are doing that in contemporary opera because these characters are new characters, the source material is limited. A lot [of singers] don’t want to be in those conversations. They like being told what to do. [But] I like [being involved] because I have valuable information and can contribute.
That leads me to ask: Are you still under the mentorship of the great soprano Catherine Malfitano, and if so, how has she helped you over the years?
I absolutely am. We have been working together for nearly 14 years. She is an extraordinary woman [and] artist and is probably the perfect mentor for me because of her career and her upbringing. She grew up with two major artists as parents. She also grew up in New York City, went to the same high school and college [that I did], [and had] very similar training.
She also has an affinity toward drama influencing vocalism. I take the dramatic part of being an opera singer very seriously. My acting is just as important as my singing. She also [balanced] standard repertory and contemporary [music]. She had extraordinary relationships with living composers — Ned Rorem, William Bolcom. I’m doing the same thing she did [but] in my own way.
What advice do you have for young opera singers?
My main advice — and it could be applied to anyone, but especially young opera singers — is be yourself. It’s going to be extraordinarily heady and difficult not to compare yourself to others because you’re all there together. You have no idea what a career is supposed to look like, what you should or shouldn’t be singing. You’re going to look to your neighbor — they’ll look to you — and it’s the blind leading the blind.
Your teachers are going to try their best to guide you, but nothing can provide you with what you need to get out of the world by experiencing it. The best way to have opportunities and to feel confident is to do the work — discover who you are, what you want, and what makes you special. You have to be honest with yourself. Be able to dig deep, and when you find those opportunities, whether paid or not, share yourself with the world.
Then you’ll see who’s receptive. Those are the people you want on your team.
