New Orleans native Bryan Hymel is the Top Prize Winner of the 2009 Gerda Lissner Foundation Competition, and First-Prize Winner of the 2008 Licia Albanese/Puccini Foundation Competition, the 2008 Loren L. Zachary Vocal Competition, and the 2008 Giulio Gari Foundation Competition.
In June of 2009, Mr. Hymel sang B.F. Pinkerton in a revival of the late director Anthony Minghella's production of Madama Butterfly at English National Opera. The tenor sang Pinkerton with Canadian Opera Company in September of 2009, followed by a London recital debut on the Rosenblatt Recital Series, before returning to Toronto in January of 2010 as Don José in Carmen. He made his debut with the Netherlands Opera in the Spring, 2010 as Énée in the Pierre Audi production of Les Troyens, and subsequently performed Don José at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, followed by a performance of Carmen with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas, Venezuela, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
Future seasons will include debuts with Atlanta Opera and Dallas Opera as well as Ismaele in Nabucco with the Bayerische Staatsoper (Munich)
His European debut was as the Foreign Prince in Dvorak’s Rusalka at the Wexford Festival Opera in 2007, and he made his New York recital debut with Michelle DeYoung under the auspices of the George London Foundation (Mr. Hymel won the George London Award in 2007). He made his Carnegie Hall debut with Opera Orchestra of New York in a gala concert also featuring Renée Fleming, Marcello Giordani, and Dolora Zajick, and has been heard as Luigi in Il tabarro and Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi with New Orleans Opera, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly with Palm Beach Opera, and Guido in Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy at the Bard Festival under the direction of Leon Botstein.
Other recent engagements include opening the new opera house at the Wexford Festival as the Tsar in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snegurochka, Cavardossi in Tosca with Opéra National de Bordeaux, Guido in A Florentine Tragedy and Arturo in I Puritani with Greek National Opera, and the Prince in Rusalka with Boston Lyric Opera.
Mr. Hymel first came to attention at age 19 when he was a winner in the 1998 Verdi Aria Competition at the Aspen Musical Festival. At 20, he was a grand finalist in the 2000 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and received an Encouragement Grant from the George London Foundation for Singers the next year. In 2002 at the age of 23, he was a winner of the Opera Lirica d’Orvieto Aria Competition in Perugia, Italy and the Palm Beach Opera Competition. He also participated in San Francisco Opera Center's Merola Program.
He has appeared as Pollione in Norma with Union Avenue Opera; the Duke in Rigoletto with Opera Grand Rapids, Opera Birmingham and the Aspen Opera Theater Center (under the baton of Maestro Julius Rudel); and as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte with Opera Grand Rapids. For the New Orleans Opera Association Mr. Hymel has sung Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Froh in Das Rhinegold, and Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor.
Bryan studied at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia under Bill Schuman, where he sang Boris in Kat’a Kabanova, Araquil in Massenet’s La Navarraise, Max in Der Freischütz and Alfredo in La traviata.
