Thomas Hampson

He also sang in the 25th Anniversary Gala of the Metropolitan Opera, which was recorded live for video/CDV.

The same year, he released a Cole Porter tribute album on EMI/Angel.

Thomas Walter Hampson (born June 28, 1955) is an American lyric baritone, a classical singer who has appeared world-wide in major opera houses and concert halls and made over 170 musical recordings.

Hampson's operatic repertoire spans a range of more than 80 roles, including the title roles in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini's Guillaume Tell and Il barbiere di Siviglia, Thomas' Hamlet, and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

The center of his Verdi repertoire remains Posa in Don Carlo, Germont in La traviata, the title roles in Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra, and more recently also Amfortas in Wagner's Parsifal and Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca.

As a recitalist Hampson has won worldwide recognition for his thoughtfully researched and creatively constructed programs that explore the rich repertoire of song in a wide range of styles, languages, and periods.

He is one of the most important interpreters of German Romantic song – especially known for his interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler – and, with his "Song of America" project collaboration with the Library of Congress, has become known as the "ambassador" of American song.

Hampson's diverse and expansive discography has earned him an Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement, four Edison Awards, four Echo prizes, numerous VEB Deutsche Schallplatten, Gramophone Awards, and Grand Prix du Disque, as well as six Grammy Award nominations, and one Grammy Award.

Vienna Acoustics, an Austrian music company, named one of their speakers "The Hampson Edition."

Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf once said of her student, "[Thomas Hampson is] the best singer in Europe right now."

Born in Elkhart, Indiana, Hampson has two older sisters, with whom he sang in church as a child.

He grew up in Spokane, Washington, where he enrolled at Eastern Washington State College (now Eastern Washington University) in Cheney, majoring in political science/government.

Concurrently, Hampson earned a BFA in Voice Performance at Fort Wright College under the tutelage of Sister Marietta Coyle.

During the summers of 1978 and 1979, he studied under Gwendolyn Koldowsky and Martial Singher at the Music Academy of the West, where he won the Lotte Lehmann Award.

He then continued his studies at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he worked with vocal coach Jack Metz and the baritone Horst Günter, a lifelong mentor.

In 1980, as a consequence of winning the San Francisco Opera audition, he competed in the Merola Opera Program, in which he met Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

An audition tour in Europe in the early 1980s brought him a contract with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, as well as the opportunity to study with Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, whom he had met at the Merola program.

In 1981, he was one of the winners in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions national finals.

In his three years as a member of the Düsseldorf ensemble (1981–84), he honed his stage experience with a number of smaller roles, but also had bigger assignments, both in Düsseldorf and elsewhere.

He sang the title role in Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg in Darmstadt, and Guglielmo, in a Jonathan Miller production of Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, which brought him significant attention in the United States.

In 1984, he began an engagement at the Opernhaus Zürich as a principal lyric baritone, among others participating in the legendary Harnoncourt-Ponnelle Mozart cycle, including all of the Da Ponte operas and the title role of the famed 1987 production of Don Giovanni.

Engagements during this time also included those with companies in Hamburg, Cologne, and Vienna, and his 1984 London recital debut at Wigmore Hall.

His U.S. recital debut occurred April 14, 1986 at The Town Hall in New York, where The New York Times praised him for "good looks, a commanding stage presence and, even within the confines of the recital format, an apparently vivid theatricality...".

Shortly after, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut on October 9, 1986 as the Count in Le nozze di Figaro.

In 1986, he was invited to audition for Leonard Bernstein, which led to Hampson's participation in the 1987 semi-staged performance of Puccini's La bohème in Rome, led by Bernstein, and, soon after, their legendary performances with the Vienna Philharmonic of Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (1988), Rückert-Lieder (1990) and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1990).

From this point forward, he was recognized as "among the leading lyric baritones of the late century."

The next years brought performances in many of the world's most important concert venues (including Avery Fisher Hall, Barbican Centre, Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw, Royal Albert Hall, Théâtre du Châtelet), opera houses (including Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Vienna State Opera) and festivals (Mostly Mozart Festival, Maggio Musicale, the Salzburg Festival), where Hampson performed with some of the world's most renowned pianists (incl. John Browning, Geoffrey Parsons, Wolfram Rieger, Craig Rutenberg, Wolfgang Sawallisch), orchestras (incl. Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Spokane Symphony, Staatskapelle Berlin, UBS Verbier Orchestra) and conductors (incl.

Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniele Gatti, Vladimir Jurowski, James Levine, Fabio Luisi, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Franz Welser-Möst).

In 1990, Hampson released his first solo recital album on Teldec titled Des Knaben Wunderhorn, in collaboration with Geoffrey Parsons.

The piano used for the recording had belonged to Mahler himself.

The New York Times praised the recording, saying that "the performances have a luminous beauty and cast a storyteller's spell."

In February and March of the same year, Hampson continued his partnership with Bernstein, first in a widely appreciated performance of Mahler's Rückert-Lieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and then for his Carnegie Hall debut, performing Mahler's two cycles with the Vienna Philharmonic (Bernstein's last public performances in the venue).

In November, he made his San Francisco Opera debut, performing the title role in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and role debut as Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera.

In 1991, Hampson opened the New York Philharmonic season in a Live from Lincoln Center telecast, singing Aaron Copland's Old American Songs in a performance conducted by Kurt Masur.

In 1992, he was named the Musical America's Singer of the Year, alongside John Corigliano, Robert Shaw, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Yo-Yo Ma.

The year included many notable performances, including: the Rossini 200th birthday gala at Avery Fisher Hall, the title role in Britten's Billy Budd at the Met, the Count in Le nozze di Figaro at Florence's Maggio Musicale conducted by Zubin Mehta, Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem with Daniel Barenboim at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and two performances of Schumann's Dichterliebe: one in Geneva and the other in his first recital at Carnegie Hall.

Hampson began 1993 by performing his first rendition of the title character in Thomas' Hamlet in Monte Carlo.

The performance was subsequently recorded for EMI/Angel.

That year, he continued to add to his repertoire with performances including Il barbiere di Siviglia at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Met, his debut in the role of Posa in Verdi's Don Carlo in Zürich, the title role in Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg, and Chorebe in Les Troyens by Berlioz at the Metropolitan Opera.

1993 also saw the beginning of Hampson's institutional involvement in the classical world, when he gave a series of master classes at the Tanglewood Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts.