Wm. Clay Thompson

Bass

Ryan Opera Center Ensemble

This Season at Lyric: King/Aida

Previously at Lyric: Zuniga/Carmen and Second Courtier/Le Comte Ory (both 2022/23).

The American bass, a second-year Ryan Opera Center member, is a two-time District winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and was a Semi-Finalist in the 2020 Fort Worth Opera McCammon Voice Competition. He recently debuted at Arizona Opera (Zuniga/Carmen) and the Metropolitan Opera (Octet Singer/Brett Dean’s Hamlet). Thompson is a former participant in the Santa Fe Opera and Wolf Trap Opera young-artist programs. From 2017 to 2019, he was a Resident Artist at The Minnesota Opera, performing in operas of Mozart, Verdi, Massenet, Puccini, Jake Heggie, Kevin Puts, and Joel Puckett (The Fix, world premiere). Thompson has been featured at the Château de Versailles Spectacles (Suleyman Pasha/The Ghosts of Versailles, European debut), The Glimmerglass Festival (The Cunning Little Vixen, Silent Night, West Side Story, Noye’s Fludde, The Ghosts of Versailles, and La traviata) and Fort Worth Opera (Zuniga/Carmen and Raymond Buck/David T. Little’s JFK, world premiere), among other companies. In the summer of 2023 he returns to Wolf Trap to sing Méphistophélès/Faust.

Wm. Clay Thompson is sponsored by Lead Sponsor the J. Thomas Hurvis Endowment, in loving memory of Dick Kiphart.