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Featured as Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte on PBS’s Great Performances: LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER telecast of New York City Opera’s 1987 production, bass Gregory Stapp has won acclaim performing with celebrated opera companies, music festivals and orchestras across America as well as in Europe, Mexico and Japan.
Many of his appearances with the San Francisco Opera have been broadcast nationally over NPR. He has sung thirty roles under the auspices of San Francisco Opera, including Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, the Priest in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Lodovico in Otello, the Parson in The Cunnning Little Vixen, Dansker in Billy Budd, Brander in La Damnation de Faust and Achillas in Julius Caesar as well as Friar Lawrence in Roméo & Juliette and Pluto in Il ballo dell’ingrate for SFO’s Spring Opera Theater in its final season at the Curran Theater.
His Emperor Altoum in Connecticut Grand Opera’s American stage premiere of Busoni’s Turandot and Fasolt in François Rochaix’s production of Wagner’s Der Ring Nibelungen for Seattle Opera drew wide attention to the American bass.
For Nevada Opera’s Silver Anniversary in 1993, he created the role of John Mackay in the world premiere of Bern Herbolsheimer’s Mark Me Twain.
In 1985 Stapp marked his debuts at the Spoleto festivals as Ashby in the Italian telecast production of La Fanciulla del West, directed by the celebrated filmmaker Bruce Beresford.
Spoleto festival founder Gian-Carlo Menotti presented him in recital on Spoleto’s prestigious Concerti di Mezzogiorno and invited him to Scotland to portray Mr. Kofner in the composer’s Edinburgh Festival production of The Consul.
In 1991 he was seen as Ramfis in Aïda in Guadalajara, Mexico, as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni for Japan’s Sakai City Opera, and heard in concert in Osaka.
Subsequent appearances under Sakai’s auspices have included starring in an Osaka cabaret concert and singing Colline in La Bohème in 1992, Sparafucile and Monterone in Rigoletto in 1994, and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, in a joint production with Germany’s Chemnitz Opera in 1992.
In December of 1998, he returned to Japan to sing in Verdi’s Requiem with the Osaka Symphoniker.
His performances of Osmin in The Abduction from the Seraglio have won enthusiastic acclaim from audiences and critics alike in many productions across the country.
Stapp has also scored triumphs in roles as diverse as Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Bluebeard in Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Kecal in The Bartered Bride, Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville, Ferrando in Il Trovatore, The Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo, Reverend Hale in The Crucible, Timur in Turandot and Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha.
He has appeared in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Sacramento Symphony, Walla Walla Symphony, Illinois Symphony, Colorado Springs Symphony, Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra, Ventura County Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Carmel Bach Festival, Philadelphia Singers and the Osaka Philharmoniker in such works as Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Mozart’s Requiem and Zauberflöte, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Händel’s Messiah, Verdi’s Requiem, Stravinsky’s Œdipus Rex, Falla’s La vida breve, Wagner’s Die Walküre and Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, and he sang in the USA premiere of Garcia’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
He has been featured on Operatic and Broadway Pops concerts for the Bear Valley Music Festival, Opera Company of Philadelphia, San Francisco Opera and Sakai City Opera. An eloquent recitalist, he has also presented dozens of informal educational programs under the auspices of Affiliate Artists, the AVA Concert Bureau, Mississippi Opera and other arts organizations.
In recent seasons, in addition to many assignments for San Francisco Opera (including Die Zauberflöte, Otello, Doktor Faust, The Cunning Little Vixen, La Damnation de Faust, Don Carlos and Billy Budd), he has sung Sparafucile for Cleveland Opera, Don Basilio for Tulsa Opera, the Commendatore for SFOpera Center/Yountville Lincoln Theater, Balthazar for Trinity Lyric Opera, the King for Sacramento Opera’s Aïda, and Osmin at the Lake George Opera Festival, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Lyric Opera Cleveland.
In 2008, San Francisco’s Old First Concerts presented his extraordinarily successful Profondo Delights & Laments concert with pianist Robert Ashens and the Mondavi Center heard him in the Gloria from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with Jeffrey Thomas and the UC Davis Symphony and Chorus.
Last year, he appeared at Modesto’s Gallo Center with San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows for a gala Townsend Opera concert; sang Sarastro and gave a master class for Notre Dame de Namur University; and traveled to China, where he performed with the Shandong Symphony and Kunming Symphony and gave master classes at the Music College of the Shandong Teachers University and at Kunming University’s Music Conservatory.
He has also appeared with opera companies in Pittsburgh, Costa Mesa, Baltimore, Portland, Miami, St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Eugene, Syracuse, Birmingham, Reno, Honolulu, Knoxville, Sacramento, Walnut Creek, Hartford, Greensboro, San Luis Obispo, Colorado Springs, Bridgeport, Memphis, Stamford, Buffalo, Columbus, Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Toledo, Oakland, Jackson, Austin, Fort Worth and Philadelphia, among others.
Highly praised for his exceptional enunciation, musicianship, dramatic presence, comic timing and fabulously rich, deep bass voice, Stapp has received substantial awards and prizes from the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, National Institute for Music Theater, Baltimore Opera Auditions and the William Matheus Sullivan Musical Foundation.
Appointed to the elite San Francisco/Affiliate Artists-Opera Program in 1980, Stapp was later awarded one of the San Francisco Opera Center’s five inaugural Adler Fellowships.
Born and raised in Colorado, Stapp won scholarships to and graduated from Denver’s Loretto Heights College and Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts. His fifteen roles with the AVA Opera Theatre included Waldner in Arabella, Tommaso in Tiefland and Charlemagne in the 1980 American premiere of Schubert’s Fierrabras.
He has studied voice with George Lynn, Dorothy DiScala, Margaret Harshaw, Janet Parlova, Jerome Hines and Judith Natalucci.
An accomplished teacher himself, Stapp has given master classes in Japan, China and the United States. In addition to his long-standing performing career, he maintains a private vocal studio in San Francisco.
