Mario Chang

Winner of the 2014 Operalia Competition, Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang has been praised as a “born bel canto tenor” by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times. This season, he was scheduled to sing Alfredo in La traviata in house debuts at both Opera Hong Kong and Florida Grand Opera. Recently, he made house debuts at Norwegian National Opera as the Duke in Rigoletto and at Arizona Opera as Rodolfo in La bohème. On the concert stage, he sang Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, and had been scheduled to perform Rossini’s Petite Misse Solennelle at the Washington National Cathedral.

In the 2018-2019 season, Mr. Chang sang Alfredo in house debuts at both Washington National Opera and Atlanta Opera, as well as in a return to Oper Frankfurt. He also reprised Rodolfo in a return to Santa Fe Opera during the summer of 2019.

Operatic highlights from previous seasons include performances at the Metropoltian Opera as Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, the Italian Tenor in Der Rosenkavalier, opposite Renée Fleming and under the baton of Edward Gardner, Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor, and the Fourth Squire in Parsifal; his house debut at Los Angeles Opera as Rodolfo, under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, and subsequent return to the company as Ismaele in Nabucco, opposite Plácido Domingo; his house debut at Santa Fe Opera as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor; his house and role debut at North Carolina Opera as Alfredo; and performances at Opera Frankfurt as Lenski in Yevgeny Onegin, the Duke in Rigoletto, the title roles in Werther and Roberto Devereux, and Rodolfo.

Concert highlights include his Hollywood Bowl debut as Cassio in Otello with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and performances with the National Symphony Orchestra as the Italian Tenor, opposite Renée Fleming and under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach. Additional engagments include Mozart’s Requiem with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Guatemala, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Orquesta Sinfónica Centroamericana in Nicaragua, a concert in Puerto Rico honoring Giuseppe Verdi with Teatro de la Opera, his participation in the Opera Studio at L’Accademia di Santa Cecilia di Roma in Italy with Renata Scotto, his Carnegie Hall debut in a concert with the Musical Olympus Foundation, and his debut with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne in Rennes, France. Mr. Chang was also a guest soloist with the St. Petersburg State Capella Symphony Orchestra at Festival Musical Olympus in Russia, and later returned to Carnegie Hall to appear in recital as part of the Marilyn Horne Song Foundation.

Honors and awards include First Prize, Zarzuela Prize, and audience favorite at the 2014 Opealia Competition, Top Prize in the 2014 Gerda Lissner Foundation competition, a Festival Musique et Vin au Clos Vougeot career grant in 2013, a 2012 Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award grant for promising Young Classical Artists, and the 2011 overall First Prize, Plácido Domingo Prize, and ‘Amigos de Sabadell’ Prize in the Francisco Viñas Competition at the Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona. He has also received awards from the Concurso de Canto Lírico de Trujillo, Perú, and the Asociación Artista del Año and Asociación Dante Alighieri in Guatemala.

Mr. Chang was a member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera and the Advanced Diploma in Opera Studies program at the Juilliard School. Mr. Chang and his wife, soprano Maria José Morales, co-founded Querido Arte: Compañía de Ópera de Guatemala – a young, fresh opera company whose goal is to make Guatemala a benchmark for opera in Latin America and throughout the world. Since the company was established, Ópera de Guatemala has produced fully-staged productions of Rigoletto, La bohème, and L’elisir d’amore.