Hansel and Gretel program updates

NICHOLAS NEWTON | FATHER

Lyric debut

The bass-baritone makes his Dallas Opera debut this season as Monterone in Rigoletto. Other operatic highlights of the season include a Detroit Opera debut in Handel’s Xerxes in a Tazewell Thompson production led by Dame Jane Glover, and Salome at Houston Grand Opera directed by Francisco Negrin and under the baton of Eun Sun Kim. Last season Newton made a Santa Fe Opera debut as Don Basilio in a new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia directed by Stephen Barlow. He created the roles of Daddy/Tim in the Houston Grand Opera world premiere of Joel Thompson and Andrea Davis Pinkney’s The Snowy Day and also played Friar Laurence in Roméo et Juliette conducted by Patrick Summers. Newton completed his training at the Houston Grand Opera Studio in the 2020/21 season and performed Billy King in the world premiere of Damien Sneed’s Marian’s Song and Monterone in Rigoletto. Other notable performances of that season included the roles of Colline in a reduced production of La bohème and Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd with Wolf Trap Opera, Monterone in Rigoletto with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and both Olin Blitch in Susannah and Achilla in Giulio Cesare at Rice University.