DENNIS PETERSEN

Through his innate sense of style, command of languages and superior acting abilities, tenor Dennis Petersen has distinguished himself in a variety of operatic roles, in addition to his appearances in concerts, recitals and oratorio performances.

His debut with the Seattle Opera as Mime in both Das Rheingold and Siegfried, August 2009, brought the highest accolades from Ring fans and critics alike ("...has emerged as one of the handful of superb character tenors, and his protrayal of the Siegfried Mime was masterful...Petersen has a large attractive voice that one imagines could be employed in tenor lead roles in the French and early 19th centruy Italian repertories...." - August 2009- OperaWarhorses.com).   Dennis toured Japan in Summer 2008,  singing the School Master in Vixen under Seiji Ozawa at the Saito Kinen Festival .  Recent seasons included the New York premiere of Dead Man Walking at New York City Opera, Turandot and Madama Butterfly for San Francisco Opera, Salome for Opera Pacific, the U.S.premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale with Minnesota Opera and Dead Man Walking for Michigan Opera Theatre. He appeared with San Francisco in Die Zauberfloete, Doktor Faust and The Cunning Little Vixen which he also sang with Chicago Lyric during the 2004-05 season in addition to Mime in Das Rheingold.  He returned to Chicago for additional performances of Rheingold .  

Recent seasons saw him returning to Lyric Opera of Chicago for Zauberfloete, Die Fledermaus and Dialogues of the Carmelites and San Francisco Opera for Fledermaus and the new production of La Forza del Destino and to the Metropolitan Opera for Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. And the revivals of The Gambler and War and Peace. With Spoleto Festival USA he appeared in the new productions of Mahagonny and 2008’s Amistad.  Dennis's performance as Herod in Minnesota Opera's production of Salome in April 2010 brought rave reviews.

 His future work includes Boris Gudunov and Tosca at the Met in 2010-11, and Magic Flute at Israli Opera in May 2011.

 Since making his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1995 as The Drunken Lout in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, he has been seen there on a regular basis in such roles as Bob Boles in Peter Grimes, Monastatos in Die Zauberflote, Mime in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, The Merry Widow, and War and Peace.

 He has sung with San Francisco Opera nearly every year since 1985 in a variety of operas including Pique Dame, Der Rosenkavalier, Salome, Tosca, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, Andrea Chenier, Il Ritorno di Ulisse, Don Quichotte, Capriccio, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Pagliacci, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Meistersinger, Romeo et Juliette, Boris Godunov, Lulu, L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Prince Igor, Anna Bolena, Wozzeck, and War and Peace. With the Lyric Opera of Chicago he has been in Die Fledermaus, Andrea Chenier, Salome, Das Rheingold, and with the New York City Opera he has sung Lizzie Borden, Intermezzo, and Roberto Devereux.

 Mr. Petersen has appeared to great advantage with most of America’s leading regional theatres: Opera Pacific (Der Rosenkavalier, Butterfly, Salome), Minnesota Opera (George Antheil’s Transatlantic, Der Fliegende Hollander, Zauberfloete) Florida Grand Opera (Ariadne auf Naxos) New Orleans Opera (Tannhauser, Le Nozze di Figaro, Fidelio), Palm Beach Opera (Tannhauser), Boston Lyric Opera (Herod in Salome), and the Spoleto Festival (Dido and Aeneas, Il Duca d’Alba, Les Contes d’Hoffmann). At Japan’s Saito Kinen Festival he has sung Basilio in Figaro with Seiji Ozawa.  He has also sung concert performances of Tchaplitsky in Pique Dame and Salome with the Boston Symphony and Seiji Ozawa in Boston and in New York.

 Orchestral appearances have included Bach’s Magnificat with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, the Beethoven Ninth Symphony with the symphonies of Eugene and Columbus, the Messiah, Magnificat and Mozart Mass in C and Requiem with the St. Paul Chamber Symphony under High Wolff, the Verdi Requiem with Cedar Rapids Symphony and St Cloud Symphony, Haydn’s Theresienmesse at both Spoleto Festivals, Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Times with New York Choral Society at Carnegie Hall, and performances with the New Jersey Symphony, Baltimore Symphony and the Calgary Philharmonic.

 A partial list of conductors Mr. Petersen has sung with include Seiji Ozawa, James Levine, Edo de Waart, Zubin Mehta, James Conlon, George Manahan, Andrew Davis, David Zinman, Mario Bernardi, John de Main, Fabio Luisi, Donald Runnicles, Valery Gergiev and Marco Armiliato.

A native of West Branch, Iowa he received his bachelor and master degrees from the University of Iowa before joining San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program in 1984 where he was awarded the Karl Kritz Memorial Scholarship.  Dennis currently resides in the country outside of Northfield, Minnesota, with his wife Denise and their two dogs.  They have two wonderful sons, Nicholas and Noah.