Praised by Opera News as a tenor of “stunningly sweet tone,” Edward Graves is a recent graduate of the Adler Fellowship at San Francisco Opera. Bay Area performances included a workshop of Jake Heggie’s opera Intelligence with Houston Grand Opera, as well as Stone/Eunuch in Bright Sheng’s Dreams of the Red Chamber and Gastone in La Traviata at San Francisco Opera. Other San Francisco Opera assignments included covering the roles of Alfredo in La Traviata and Lensky in Eugene Onegin before engaging in a “thrilling who-can-sing-it-higher face-off from Rossini’s Otello” (San Francisco Chronicle) in The Future is Now: Adlers in Concert. Edward earned critical praise as Anatol in Barber’s Vanessa at the Spoleto Festival USA. He sang Rodolfo in SFO’s Bohème Out of the Box, covered the title role in Omar, sang Ruiz in Il Trovatore, and makes role and company debuts as the Duke in Rigoletto with Opera San Jose and Alfredo in La Traviata with Opera Tampa in 2024.
Previous engagements include Handel’s Messiah with the Virginia Symphony, the Detroit Opera as Policeman 2 in Tesori’s Blue, and Berkshire Choral International as the title role in Judas Maccabaeus. His appearance in the Merola Opera Program’s What The Heart Desires earned a San Francisco Chronicle rave for his “superbly bright, clarion sound.”
Edward has performed Rinuccio in a double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost with Michigan Opera Theatre, Robbins in Porgy and Bess with Seattle Opera, and Policeman 2 in the world premiere of Blue at the Glimmerglass Festival, where he also sang Fred in Oklahoma! and Peter in Porgy and Bess. As a Baumgartner Studio Artist at Florentine Opera, he performed roles in The Merry Widow, Venus and Adonis/ Dido and Aeneas and The Magic Flute.
Graves was a 2022 San Francisco District winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition. Following his bachelor studies in Voice Performance at Towson University, he received his Performer Diploma and Master of Music in Voice Performance from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
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