On Opening Night of the 1988/89 Metropolitan Opera season, Jeffrey Wells made his debut as Ferrando in Il Trovatore under the baton of James Levine. Since this auspicious debut, he has sung close to 400 performances at the Met in roles such as Colline in La Boheme, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Timur in Turandot, Escamillo in Carmen, The King in Aida, and Capulet in Roméo et Juliette. In the Met's first-ever production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, he created the part of Theseus, an assignment he repeated at the Met in the 2001/2002 season.
In the 2007-2008 season, Mr. Wells appears at the Metropolitan Opera in productions of War & Peace, Carmen and Un ballo in maschera. He will also sing Capulet in PORTopera’s production of Roméo et Juliette, and appear in Amistad at the Spoleto Festival USA.
Jeffrey Wells has appeared with every major opera company in the United States. He is a particular favorite at San Francisco Opera and at Washington National Opera. In his debut season with New York City Opera, he appeared as Oroveso in Norma and as Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor. Notable past engagements include: Assur in Rossini's Semiramide at Opéra de Nice, Baldasare in La Favorite at Opéra Comique, Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress at the Glyndebourne Festival, Claggart in Billy Budd at Houston Grand Opera, Méphistophélès in a staged version of La Damnation de Faust at Brooklyn Academy of Music and at Avery Fisher Hall, and Wotan in Das Rheingold at San Francisco Opera the title role in Don Giovanni with the Cleveland Opera, and the role of Mephistopheles in Faust with the Michigan Opera Theater. Jeffrey Wells made his Carnegie Hall debut with The Collegiate Chorale in Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle.
Mr. Wells has recorded Baldasare in La Favorite on the French Elf label, Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht on the Telarc label with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra as well as the title role in Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra for New World Records.
In the recent past, Mr. Wells performed Blitch in Susannah at Washington National Opera; he has played the part in eleven different productions. He sang Escamillo for Opera Pacific and appeared as Claggart with Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, Canadian Opera Company and New Israeli Opera. He made his Santa Fe Opera debut as Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, and had a successful engagement with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in I Capuleti e i Montecchi, as well as Rigoletto with the San Diego Opera.
