John Duykers is a prominent American operatic

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

, known for his work in modern and contemporary opera. He made his formal debut with the Seattle Opera

Seattle Opera

The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...

, in 1966.

Since then, Duykers has appeared with the New York City Opera

New York City Opera

The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

 (Don José to Susanne Marsee

Susanne Marsee

Susanne Marsee is an American mezzo-soprano of note. She was one of the New York City Opera's leading mezzo-sopranos from 1970, when she debuted opposite Beverly Sills, Plácido Domingo and Louis Quilico, in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, with Julius Rudel conducting Tito Capobianco's...

's Carmen), and the opera companies in Chicago (title part of Tannhäuser), San Francisco (The Hunchback in Die Frau ohne Schatten, with Dame Gwyneth Jones and Anja Silja

Anja Silja

Anja Silja Regina Langwagen, , born April 17, 1940, in Berlin, is a German soprano who is known for her great abilities as a singing-actress and for the vastness of her repertoire....

), Houston (Aegisthus in Elektra), Santa Fe, Los Angeles (Iro in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria), San Diego (the villainous Enoch Pratt in Carlisle Floyd

Carlisle Floyd

Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...

's The Passion of Jonathan Wade), and Philadelphia (Prince Chouïsky in Boris Godunov, and Herodes in Salome).

Abroad, he has been seen at Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

, The Netherlands Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève

Grand Théâtre de Genève

Grand Théâtre de Genève is an opera house in Geneva, Switzerland.As with many other opera houses, the Grand Théâtre de Genève is both a venue and an institution. The venue is a majestic building, towering over Place Neuve, officially opened in 1876, partly destroyed by fire in 1951 and reopened in...

 (title role in Benvenuto Cellini), Frankfurt Opera, Opéra de Marseilles (Mime in Siegfried) and the Canadian Opera Company

Canadian Opera Company

The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...

.
Duykers most celebrated role has certainly been that of Mao Tse-Tung(an extraordinarily testing part) in the 1987 world-premiere of John Adams' Nixon in China, which was televised (winning an Emmy Award

Emmy Award

An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

), and recorded (winning a Grammy Award

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

). He was also in the world premiere of O corvo branco ("White Raven"), by Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson (director)

Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...

 and Philip Glass

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

, in 1998. Recently, he appeared in San Francisco as the title (and sole) character in Erling Wold

Erling Wold

Erling Wold is a San Francisco based composer of opera and contemporary classical music. He is best known for his later chamber operas, especially A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil and his early experiments as a microtonalist...

's Mordake, and as the Captain in the new chamber-orchestra version of Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

's Wozzeck

Wozzeck

Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...

and for Long Beach Opera, reprising the role of Mao Tse-Tung in Nixon in China.

External links

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBCD-p9lD_4 YouTube: John Duykers in an excerpt from Erling Wold
  Erling Wold
  Erling Wold is a San Francisco based composer of opera and contemporary classical music. He is best known for his later chamber operas, especially A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil and his early experiments as a microtonalist...
  
  's Sub Pontio Pilato (2003).