Who’s the greatest opera singer from North Dakota? If no names instantly leap to mind, don’t be alarmed. By the end of Los Angeles Opera’s 2024–2025 season, you may have a solid candidate: tenor Nathan Bowles.
A national grand finalist in the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, the Dallas-based singer is one of eight rising performers who are part of LA Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artists Program this coming year. Six singers and two pianists/coaches will spend the season with the company, with the vocalists taking numerous smaller roles in mainstage productions.
Bowles, a graduate of Minot State University (he also earned a master’s degree from Southern Methodist University), is spending the summer working as an apprentice artist at Santa Fe Opera, appearing in four productions there, including Der Rosenkavalier. For LA Opera’s 2024–2025 season, he will perform Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet, the Torero in Ainadamar, and Borsa in Rigoletto.
Brazilian bass-baritone Vinícius Costa, who will perform in the same three operas, is a Renée Fleming artist at the Aspen Music Festival this summer. He won the Vaughan Williams Song Prize at the 2022 Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition in London.
Chinese tenor Yuntong Han was a national grand finalist in the 2023 Laffont Competition. Trained at the New England Conservatory of Music and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, he will perform Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and cover the role of Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly.
Returning for her second year in the Domingo-Colburn-Stein program is soprano Kathleen O’Mara. She was Berta in LA Opera’s The Barber of Seville last fall and will make her Metropolitan Opera debut in that same role this coming season. This year, she’ll also make her San Diego Opera debut as Mimi in La bohème.
South Korean baritone Hyungjin Son, another national grand finalist in the 2023 Laffont Competition, recently earned a master’s degree from New England Conservatory. On Aug. 1 and 3, he will sing the title role in Don Giovanni with San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program. He will make his LA Opera debut as Prince Yamadori in Madame Butterfly and later appear in Romeo and Juliet, Ainadamar, and Rigoletto.
Canadian American soprano Gabrielle Turgeon, who recently earned her master’s from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, will make her LA Opera debut as Kate Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly and will then appear in Ainadamar and Rigoletto.
In addition to the singers, two pianists/coaches will take part in the program. Sujin Choi, a native of South Korea with a degree from New England Conservatory, will be on the music staff for Romeo and Juliet and Rigoletto. Julian Garvue, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and Indiana University, will work as a coach on Così fan tutte and Ainadamar. Both are participating in the Merola Opera Program this summer.
For more information on all of these young artists, go to LA Opera’s website.
