John Relyea

The Canadian bass John Relyea is a graduate of the Merola Opera Program and was an Adler Fellow of San Francisco Opera, where he made his debut as Colline (La bohème). Since then he has performed at the most prestigious opera houses worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, La Scala, Milan, the Bavarian and Vienna State Operas, the Semperoper Dresden, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Mariinsky Theatre and the Canadian Opera Company.

Highlights of 2024/25 have included his appearances as the Commander in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale in San Francisco, Méphistophélès (Faust) in Paris, Padre Guardiano (La forza del destino) in Barcelona, Philip II (Don Carlo) at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and Gurnemanz (Parsifal) at the Glyndebourne Festival. In 2023/24 he sang the title role of Boito’s Mefistofele and Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte) at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

His extensive repertory also includes the title roles in Attila, Don Quichotte, Aleko, Le nozze di Figaro and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and roles such as Zaccaria (Nabucco), Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Alfonso (Lucrezia Borgia), Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Méphistophélès (La Damnation de Faust), the Four Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Marke (Tristan und Isolde), Kaspar (Der Freischütz), Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress), King René (Iolanta) and Claggart (Billy Budd).

In concert he has performed with the Berlin, Vienna and New York Philharmonics, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestras of Chicago, Boston, Atlanta und San Francisco, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestra Sinfonica della RAI. The international festivals to which he has been invited include Tanglewood, Ravinia, Edinburgh and Lucerne, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the BBC Proms and the Salzburg Festival, where he made his debut in 2001.

His discography includes Verdi’s Messa da Requiem under Colin Davis, Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito under Charles Mackerras, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony under Simon Rattle, and Don Giovanni, I puritani, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Macbeth and Rusalka in DVD productions from the Metropolitan Opera.

John Relyea is the winner of the Richard Tucker Award 2003 and the Beverly Sills Artist Award 2009.