OPERA MUSIC THEATER INTERNATIONAL
 
 
JAMES K. MCCULLY,  President  &  General Director

Thomas Stewart
Opera Music Theater International
OMTI Lifetime Achievement Award

Thomas Stewart is unique in the world of opera. He is one of the few American singers to perform leading roles in the major opera houses of both the United States and Europe in the German, Italian and French repertoire.

Thomas Stewart was the recipient of the 1985 San Francisco Opera medal for 25 years of distinguished performance with that company. Recently he sang Wotan in their cycle of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and King Lear in Jean Pierre Ponnelle's production of Reimands's opera Lear. His recent performances in Die Meistersinger and The Magic Flute with the Lyric Opera of Chicago marked a triumphant return to this company which presented his professional debut in 1954 (also the company's inaugural season) in Giannini's Taming of the Shrew and opposite Maria Callas in Lucia di Lammermoor. At the Metropolitan Opera his repertoire included Wagner's Sachs, Wotan, the Wanderer, Wolfram, Hollander, Amfortas, Kurvenal and Gunther. In the Italian and French repertoire he was represented by Golaud in Pelleas et Melisande, the Four Villians in Hoffman, Escamilo, Verdi's Iago, Amonasro and Ford (Met debut, 1966). Mozart's Count and Giovanni, Strauss' Orestes and Jokanaan and Britten's Balstrode, were also starring roles in the new productions at the Metropolitan.

After a Fulbright Scholarship, he and his wife Evelyn Lear were engaged with the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1958. Mr. Stewart soon became world-renowned for his repertoire of Wagnerian roles, including thirteen years at the Bayreuth Festival and as the first American baritone to sing all four leading roles in the ring cycle of Wagner at the Festival. In addition Thomas Stewart has sung Der Ring Des Nibelungen with the Vienna, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Paris, San Francisco and metropolitan Operas and at the Salzburg Festival with Karajan. He has sung with many other eminent conductors, including Kempe, Knappertsbusch, Solti, Colin, Davis, Mehta, Ozawa, Leinsdorf, Pretre, Maazel, Levine and Bohm.

Thomas Stewart has recorded many of his operatic roles including the Bayreuth Festival's Parsifal, Die Walkuere, Siegfried and Gotterdaemmerung with von Karajan; Lohengrin with Kubelik and Der Fliegend Hollaender with Bohm. Other recordings include Nabucco, Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Tiefland.

Thomas Stewart has received the Opera Music Theater International Lifetime Achievement Award for his illustrious career in the history of opera, and his commitment to a new generation of OMTI Emerging Artists, through the OMTI Master Class Series at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and as adjudicator of OMTI International Vocal Competitions.
 

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