Eric Owens

Eric Owens (born July 11, 1970, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American bass-baritone celebrated for his interpretation and embrace of both classical and contemporary works and for his ability to sing across the baritone and bass vocal range, which gave him a highly varied repertoire. Owens also displayed a remarkable range in acting ability, portraying a diverse array of characters, from the regal King of Scotland in George Frideric Handel’s Ariodante to the villain Sparafucile in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto to the resilient Porgy in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Owens expressed interest in music from an early age and first attended the Germantown branch of the Settlement Music School in northwestern Philadelphia when he was six years old. He was initially taught on the piano; he later became proficient on the oboe and was playing professionally by age 15. Owens studied voice and singing at Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, receiving a B.M. in vocal performance (1993) and becoming a student of Armen Boyajian. Owens later enrolled in the graduate voice program at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, earning a master’s degree in 1995.

Owens gained widespread appreciation early in his career for his performance in the title role of composer Elliot Goldenthal’s Grendel, which premiered in 2006 in Los Angeles. He was onstage for the full performance, and the role proved to be one of the most physically and vocally challenging of Owens’s career. Nonetheless, his virtuoso singing opened the door to later roles, including that of the troll Alberich in director Robert Lepage’s contemporary, technically complex staging of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold, which debuted in 2010 at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera (the Met). Owens’s critically acclaimed performance identified him as one of the opera houses’s lead performers.

Owens’s fundamental understanding of music led Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams to create roles specifically for him, among them Gen. Leslie Groves in Doctor Atomic, which debuted in 2005 with the San Francisco Opera, and the Storyteller in A Flowering Tree, which premiered in 2006 in Vienna. Owens also was known for his symphonic vocal performances and his jazz singing.

Owens reached new heights of acclaim in 2016, delivering powerful solo operatic performances and serving as host and curator in his role as the Mary and James G. Wallach artist in residence at the New York Philharmonic. Owens began the year with a notable performance as Wotan, king of the gods, in Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, a role that allowed him to make full use of his exceptional range and lyrical and acting abilities. Later in the season, Owens delivered a well-received performance as the character Orest in a revival of director Patrice Chéreau’s staging of Richard Strauss’s Elektra at the Met.

Owens was a recipient of various awards, including the Marian Anderson Award (2003), which honoured extraordinary artists who had made an impact in their field. He also was a 2015 Glimmerglass Opera Festival artist in residence.