ProFile
Kostas Smoriginas is one of the most promising bass-baritones of today. He made his international debut at the Berliner Staatsoper in 2009 as Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen and has since performed the role with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle (recorded for EMI Classics, 2012), at the Salzburg Easter Festival, Santa Fe Music Festival, Bregenz Festival, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Bolshoi Theatre, Dresden Semperoper, Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, and Beijing’s National Centre for Performing Arts.
Smoriginas made his U. S. opera debut in 2010 as Figaro in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Washington National Opera, a role he later performed at San Francisco Opera. He has recorded as Pietro in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra alongside Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ildar Abdrazakov and Barbara Frittoli, with the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra under Konstantin Orbelian (for Delos Music, 2015). His other operatic engagements have included title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Teatro Municipal Santiago, Chile, and in Toulouse; Leporello in Don Giovanni at Opera de Bordeaux; Tomsky in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades with the New Israeli Opera; title role in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin; Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca with the Vilnius City Opera; and Masetto in Don Giovanni for his Teatro alla Scala debut and in a new production by Dmitri Tcherniakov conducted by Marc Minkowski at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Highlights of his 2018‒19 season included Kurwenal in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Jochanaan in Strauss’s Salomé for Oper Köln, Tomsky in The Queen of Spades for the Bolshoi Theatre, and bass-baritone parts in concert including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Rachmaninov’s The Bells with the Oslo Philharmonic. In the 2019‒20 season Smoriginas made his role debut as Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca for Opéra de Rouen, performed Kurwenal in concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons in Boston and at Carnegie Hall in New York. He reprised his Escamillo for Oper Köln and Jochanaan for Staatsoper Hannover.
His other recent successes include Escamillo in Barrie Kosky’s production of Carmen, Heerrufer in David Alden’s new Lohengrin, and Andrei Shchelkalov in a new production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov all at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden; the title roles in Don Giovanni at Opéra de Lausanne and Le nozze di Figaro in Dresden; the title roles in Eugene Onegin and Le nozze di Figaro for the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre; Count in Le nozze di Figaro in Malmö; title roles in Rachmaninov’s Aleko and Rubinshtein’s The Demon at La Monnaie, and his role debut as High Priest in Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila for the Vilnius City Opera in 2017.
Smoriginas is in high demand on the concert platform too. His repertoire includes Verdi, Brahms, Mozart and Fauré’s Requiems, Händel’s Mesiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s Magnificat, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Rachmaninov’s choral symphony The Bells, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 ‘Babi Yar’, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, Dvořák’s Te Deum and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, which he sang with Edward Gardner and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and with the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. He won rave reviews for his BBC Proms debut in Stravinsky’s Les Noces at the Royal Albert Hall.
Smoriginas (b. 1980 in Vilnius, Lithuania) studied at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy with Prof. Vladimiras Prudnikovas. During the years of study he made his operatic debut with the secondary roles for the Latvian National Opera in Riga (including Don Pizzaro in Beethoven’s Fidelio, Dandini in Rossini’s La cenerentola, and Tomsky in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades) and the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius (as Fra Melitone in Verdi’s La forza del destino). In 2005, he represented his country at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. In an audition organized after the competition by the English National Opera he received the invitation and scholarship to pursue studies at the Royal College of Music Benjamin Britten International Opera School in London (2005‒2007). He stayed in London for two more years as a member of the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House. He has completed his Master’s degree at the Vytautas Magnus University Music Academy in Kaunas, in 2019.
- solo - DEDICATION #Opera100#Theatre200 (Postponed)
