READER SUBMISSION: Evan Hughes

Evan Hughes (Photo: Matthu Placek)

This is our third straight post of our beloved "Reader Submissions." The latest is California native Evan Hughes, who is currently a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development program. The UCLA graduate attended the Curtis Institute of Music and was a regional winner and a national Semi-Finalist in the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and was the grand prize in the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition.

Hughes recently performed Aronte in Gluck’s Armide presented by the Met in collaboration with the Juilliard School; he also performed Don Basilio in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy with Lorin Maazel and reprised the role in the summer at the Castleton Festival, where he also sang the bass solo in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, both projects being conducted by Mr. Maazel.

Evan Hughes (Photo: Matthu Placek)

Hughes started the season as Don Alfonso in a production of Mozart's Così Fan Tutte directed by Stephen Wadsworth and conducted by Alan Gilbert at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Lincoln Center. Later this season he will make his Metropolitan Opera debut as Crebillon in Puccini's La Rondine.

A champion of contemporary music, Hughes appeared in Elliott Carter’s Syringa with the Met Chamber Ensemble at Zankel Hall (Carnegie) and the Tanglewood Music Festival, conducted both times by James Levine, and more recently he premiered Carter’s Three Explorations at Alice Tully Hall with the Axiom Ensemble and Jeffrey Milarsky. Another milestone in the bass-baritone’s exploration of Elliott Carter’s music was On Conversing with Paradise as part of a festival of cultural exchange entitled Ascending Dragon in Los Angeles, Hanoi and in other parts of Vietnam.