Daniel Sumegi

Bass

In the thirty-fourth year of his career, Daniel Sumegi has sung well over one hundred operatic roles on many of the world’s major stages – including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera and Australia.  He has also appeared in the opera houses of Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg, as well as Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Houston among many others.

Regarded also for his dynamic acting, his broad repertoire encompasses all periods of music – from Monteverdi and Mozart to Britten, Tippett and Puts.  Equally comfortable as Strauss’ Baron Ochs, Mozart’s Sarastro and Commendatore, Verdi’s Grand Inquisitor and Sparafucile, Offenbach’s Four Villains or Puccini’s Scarpia, he has participated in Ring Cycles in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Strasbourg, Cologne, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Seattle, Melbourne and Adelaide, most notably as Hagen.  He has additionally performed Hunding in concert for the Hong Kong, Atlanta, Stuttgart and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras.

Recent engagements have included Die Walküre (Singapore), Salome (Victorian Opera), Fidelio (Dublin), Bluebeard’s Castle, Aida, Lohengrin, Carmen (Opera Australia), Aida (Los Angeles) and Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk (Metropolitan Opera). In 2023, his appearances include Das Rheingold (Atlanta), Samson et Dalila (Seattle), Lohengrin (Metropolitan Opera); he also makes his début as Wotan/The Wanderer in OA’s new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Other recent appearances include Salome (Jochanaan) for New Israeli Opera, Der fliegende Holländer (title role) for Malmö Opera in Sweden and Carmen (Zuniga) for Seattle Opera.  He also made his musical theatre debut, as Judge Turpin in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, seen in Sydney and Melbourne.  Past highlights include Don Carlo and Madama Butterfly (The Metropolitan Opera), Der Rosenkavalier (Scottish and Welsh National Opera), Luisa Miller (San Francisco), Billy Budd and Rigoletto (Los Angeles), Parsifal (Hamburg, Barcelona, Adelaide), Salome (Washington, Hamburg, Leeds, Hong Kong), Der fliegende Holländer, Aida, Beatrice and Benedict and Barbiere (Seattle), Manchurian Candidate (Minnesota, Austin), and more than 25 principal roles for Opera Australia.

He has collaborated with noted conductors such as James Conlon, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Dan Ettinger, Asher Fisch, Valery Gergiev, Nicola Luisotti, Sir Charles Mackerras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Renato Palumbo, Sir Simon Rattle, Carlo Rizzi, Donald Runnicles, Nello Santi, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Edo de Waart, Sebastian Weigle, and Simone Young.

 Daniel Sumegi appears on CD in Beatrice di Tenda and Seattle Opera’s acclaimed Ring Cycle, and on DVD in the San Francisco Opera Production of Capriccio, Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni, and the historic condensed Ring Cycle from Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires.