A Metropolitan Opera company member since his debut in 1995, GRAMMY® Award winning bass Richard Bernstein has appeared with the MET in over 539 performances and over 125 international live broadcasts to date, which also includes 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. 

 

The 2024-25 season represents Mr. Bernstein’s 29th with the Metropolitan Opera. He is particularly delighted to return to one of his favorite roles there, Angelotti in Tosca – and this season will see his 75th performance of the role with the company. He also sings in the Met’s new production of Salome, conducted by the Met’s Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Directed by Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, the production will be streamed on May 17, 2025 as part of the company’s Live in HD season and will mark Mr. Bernstein’s 25th Live in HD appearance. Finally, the coming season once again finds him in both Simon McBurney’s full-length, German-language production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Julie Taymor’s family-friendly, abridged holiday version (The Magic Flute), sung in English. He also covers roles in Les contes d’Hoffmann and The Queen of Spades. 

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Beyond the Met’s stage, October 2024 finds him making his company debut in Madama Butterfly at the Bay Street Theater on Long Island.  

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Last season was a season of role debuts at the Met for Mr. Bernstein, including the Bonze in the Met’s acclaimed production of Madama Butterfly, and the Duke of Verona in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Following the completion of the Met’s 2023-24 season, Bernstein made his role debut as Sergeant Sulpice (on very short notice) in La fille du régiment at the Opera Company of Middlebury during Summer 2024.

In 2022, he won a GRAMMY® Award as part of the cast of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, performing the role of Aye in the Met’s production, which took home Best Opera Recording that year, and 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.

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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. 

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​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.  His most recent role debut for the company came in 2018-19, when he added Pistola in Falstaff to his impressive list of characters.

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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.

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Other notable roles include Méphistophélès in Faust, Colline (La bohème), Sancho Panza in Don Quichotte, Mustafà (L’italiana in Algeri), Olin Blitch in Susannah, Frank Maurrant (Street Scene), Orest in Elektra, Alidoro (La Cenerentola), and Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor) for companies such as Seattle Opera, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Central City Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Opera Pacific, the KlangBogen Festival in Vienna, Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, and the Savonlinna Festival in Finland.