GEORGE CORDES

Bass-baritone George Cordes has sung more than 60 opera roles with companies throughout North America and in Japan, including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Pittsburgh Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opera Tampa, Opera Columbus, Opera Grand Rapids, El Paso Opera, Syracuse Opera, the Tokyo City Orchestra, and Teatro de la Opera in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A principal artist with New York City Opera for six seasons, he was featured in consecutive PBS “Live from Lincoln Center” telecasts of Tosca and La bohème. Other highlights include the role of Bottom in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Lyric Opera of Kansas City and the Reverend Hale in The Crucible and Nourabad in Les Pecheurs de Perles, both with Opera Boston. Since 2007, George has appeared each summer with Opera by the Bay in Hingham, MA, in opera, operetta, and musical revues. In 2015, he returns there as Ko-Ko in The Mikado. In 2011, he gave a “powerful and witty performance” of the title role in Sweeney Todd with Pendragon Theatre in New York and rejoined that company in 2014 in the title role of Man of La Mancha. On the concert stage, George has appeared with the Hartford Symphony, Berkshire Choral Festival, Plymouth Philharmonic, Duxbury Music Festival, Masterworks Chorale, Motor City Symphony, Canton Symphony, Wooster Symphony, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, Hilton Head Orchestra, Ascension Music in New York, and Orquesta de las Américas in Mexico City. He and his wife, Elizabeth, live in the Adirondacks of New York, where they founded and direct High Peaks Opera.