MATTHEW SWENSEN
“A wonderfully sweet toned, lyric tenor voice that is an instrument of great beauty…”
Classical Review
In leading roles that range from Tamino to Tom Rakewell, Ferrando, Fenton and Nemorino, Matthew Swensen’s compelling performances have taken him to Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Carnegie Hall, Oper Frankfurt, State Opera of Prague, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Theater Basel, The Rheingau Festival and more.
Praised by the BBC for his role debut as Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff in Florence as “everything we could have hoped for; an ardent and generous tenor… simply phenomenal,” Matthew Swensen enters the 2024/25 season with a series of notable debuts and performances across Europe and North America.
The season begins in the summer with his debut as the Steersman in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer at Teatro Regio di Torino, followed by performances of the same role with Jaap Van Zweden and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam in September. He will sing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Allentown Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, and on tour throughout Italy and Germany. Additional debuts include performances with the Deutscher Symphoniker in Bruckner’s Te Deum and in Bach’s B Minor Mass in Munich. Swensen will also make his role debut as Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore with New Orleans Opera and reprise the role of Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Lyric Opera Kansas City.
In April 2025, he makes his Canadian debut with the Montreal Symphony in a concert performance of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, followed by a gala concert with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie in Stuttgart, where he will headline a program of ten of Strauss’s most beloved orchestral songs. He concludes the season with a live performance of Haydn’s The Creation at the Ebracher Musiksommer, which will be recorded for Bayerische Rundfunk.
He opened the 2023/24 season with his role debut in the title part of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, which was his eighth production at Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence. He debuted the role of Don Gomez in Weber’s rarely performed operetta, Die Drei Pintos, with the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig. He later returned to his signature roles of Ferrando in Cosi fan Tutte and Tamino in Die Zauberflöte at Maggio Musicale.
After graduating from the Juilliard School in 2017, he made his operatic debut in Theatre Basel’s production of Mozart’s Lucio Silla, directed by the late Hans Neuenfels. In 2018 he joined the ensemble of Oper Frankfurt, making debuts as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Camille in Die Lustige Witwe and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, among others.
In the spring of 2021 when Mr. Swensen joined Zubin Mehta in a production of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte where he made his most important debut at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. He instantly became a beloved figure at the company, and would later return to sing Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff led by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, in concert performances with Maestro Mehta, Daniel Harding, and Franz Welser-Möst. Mr. Swensen is also a committed performer of Lieder and art song. He was the winner of the Best Duo of the Wigmore Hall Song Competition in 2019 with pianist Katelan Trán Terrell.
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