Biography
Hailed for his “polished vocal technique” and “heart-tugging emotional
communication” (San Diego Story), Nicholas Newton garners due attention as a dynamic and compelling bass-baritone in the classical music world. Nicholas makes his Metropoitan Opera debut in the 2025-26 season in a new production of La Sonnambula conducted by Bel Canto specialist Riccardo Frizza. Return engagements include the world premiere of Michael R. Jackson's Complications in Sue at Opera Philadelphia, the American operatic premiere at Houston Grand Opera of Robert Wilson’s mesmerizing vision of the beloved Messiah (composed by Handel and arranged by Mozart), and audience-favorite Romeo and Juliet with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Concert performances of the season include a return to the Salzburg Festival in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux with Utopia led by Teodor Currentzis, a tour of Handel's Messiah with Jonathan Cohen and the Handel & Haydn Society, and a Kennedy Center recital debut as the 2025 Winner of the Marian Anderson Vocal Award recognizing a young American singer in opera, oratorio, or recital repertory. Given annually, this award offers winners a cash prize, a residency at Washington’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and a solo recital presented by Washington National Opera.
Last season Nicholas Newton made a highly successful debut at the Opéra national de Paris in Castor et Pollux in a new production directed by Peter Sellars. Furthermore, he joined Lyric Opera of Chicago in Le nozze di Figaro directed by Barbara Gaines led by Erina Yashima, and Opera Philadelphia in a new production of Don Giovanni directed by Alison Moritz and conducted by Corrado Rovaris. Concert performances of the season included a debut with Boston Baroque led by Martin Pearlman in Haydn’s The Creation and Handel’s Messiah with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Patrick Summers.
Highlights of past opera seasons include a European debut at the Salzburg Festival in Purcell’s The Indian Queen with Teodor Currentzis conducting Utopia Orchestra and Chorus, Rossini’s comic masterpiece La cenerentola and Richard Jones’ acclaimed production of Hänsel und Gretel at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Il barbiere di Siviglia at Cincinnati Opera and Santa Fe Opera, John Adams’ El Niño and Handel’s Rodelinda at the Metropolitan Opera, Xerxes at Detroit Opera, the world premiere of Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s The Righteous along with the role of Leporello in a fresh interpretation by Stephen Barlow of Don Giovanni both at the Santa Fe Opera, and the world premieres of Intelligence, an American epic by composer Jake Heggie, librettist Gene Scheer, and director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of Urban Bush Women, The Snowy Day by Joel Thompson and Andrea Davis Pinkney, and Marian’s Song by Damien Sneed and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton at Houston Grand Opera.
"Bass-baritone Nicholas Newton’s rich, hearty voice and sympathetic manner lent Billy a dignity of his own."
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Texas Classical Review | Marian's Song
An avid concert performer and recitalist, Nicholas Newton has garnered success in Handel’s Messiah with the Ann Arbor Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic as well as in tour performances of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones in a new suite of music from the composer’s historic opera, performed with the legendary trumpeter, his E-Collective, and the Grammy Award-winning Turtle Island Quartet. Nicholas is also an alumnus of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute and has toured with renowned pianist, Kevin Murphy, performing at the Tucson Desert Song Festival. He also has worked with the Cincinnati Song Initiative and performed in their virtual recital series: A World of Song, and appeared in Houston Grand Opera’s Giving Voice: Lawrence Brownlee & Friends concert. Other notable concert performances include Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Fauré’s Requiem, Stephen Paulus' To Be Certain of the Dawn, Gershwin’s Catfish Row with San Diego Winds, Duruflé’s Requiem with San Diego Master Chorale, and the world premiere of Michael Capp’s Christmas Revels with Las Colinas Symphony.
In addition to his burgeoning profile on international opera and concert stages, Nicholas Newton is an independent researcher whose main focus is Black composers and their operatic and vocal concert repertoire. Most recently, he worked as the lead researcher and advisor for a museum exhibition entitled COMPOSED: Honoring Black Composers in Opera & Jazz at the Metropolitan Museum of Design Detroit. He is also building a Black Opera Database; an in-progress resource created to archive, celebrate, and preserve the vocal compositional output of Black composers and works that chronicle the Black experience. He conducts most of his in-person research in New York at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and in Chicago at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago: these two centers have provided him the opportunity to research the music of Black composers in great detail through the access of Special Collections, Microfilms, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books. Nicholas Newton is an affiliate with the Black Opera Research Network where he works alongside the David G. Frey Distinguished Professor in Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Naomi André. Dr. André is today’s foremost scholar of Black opera, specializing in research on opera and issues surrounding gender, voice, and race. Nicholas Newton has delivered multiple lectures on Black opera composers while under the tutelage of composer, former Fulbright Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, and 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Walter Hinrichsen Prize in Music winner, Dr. Shih Hui Chen.
A proud alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Nicholas has received extensive training through several prestigious young artist programs. Including training as a Studio Artist and Filene Artist with Wolf Trap Opera, a Young Artist with Aspen Music Festival, in the Young Artists Vocal Academy of Houston Grand Opera, and in San Diego Opera’s Opera Exposed program. A 2021 Sullivan Award-winner, he earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from San Diego State University studying with Laurinda Nikkel and his Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from Rice University under the tutelage of Dr. Stephen King. Growing up in a musical household, Nicholas had a background in gospel and jazz before studying classical music.