Bonita Hyman

American mezzo-contralto Bonita Hyman was born in New York and has appeared on numerous stages in the United States and Europe, among them the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Dallas Opera, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Opéra de Lyon, the Opéra Comique in Paris, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, the Leipzig Opera and the Nuremberg State Theatre. She has also been heard at the Bregenz Festival and with the Nederlandse Reisopera as well as with the Opera Orchestra of New York.

Alongside her regular commitments in Düsseldorf, Bonita Hyman has been heard in recent seasons in the role of the Negress in the world premiere of Detlev Glanert’s Solaris at the 2012 Bregenz Festival and as the First Maid in Patrice Chéreau’s acclaimed production of Elektra at the 2013 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence with subsequent revivals at La Scala, Milan (2014 and 2018), the Metropolitan Opera in New York (2016), the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki (2016), the Berlin State Opera (2016 and 2019) and the Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona (2016). She has also sung Begonia in Henze’s Der junge Lord at the Hanover State Opera in 2017 and at Munich’s Theater am Gärtnerplatz in 2019 and Maria (Porgy and Bess) at the Vienna Volksoper in 2019.

Her repertoire also includes Azucena (Il trovatore), Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera), Erda (Der Ring des Nibelungen), Suzuki (Madama Butterfly), Bradamante (Alcina), Ursule (Béatrice et Bénédict), Baba the Turk and Mother Goose (The Rake’s Progress) and Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande).

As a concert artist Bonita Hyman has been heard in a wide-ranging repertoire extending from Handel’s Messiah to Verdi’s Requiem and Berio’s Sinfonia, which she has performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall. As a soloist, she has worked with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonie der Nationen, the Orchestra of the Opéra de Marseille, the Organización Filármonica de México and the Chicago Sinfonietta.

Bonita Hyman received her artistic training at the Conservatory of Music of Oberlin College, at Yale University and at the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists in Chicago.