Lucas Meachem
Lucas Meachem enjoys a busy career at the most important opera houses across the United States and Europe. A frequent collaborator with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, he made his debut as Oreste in the new Robert Carson production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Taurideopposite Susan Graham and Paul Groves, conducted by Louis Langrée. Since then he has returned to Chicago Lyric as Valentin in Faust, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Marcello in La bohème. A former Adler Fellow, he has appeared with San Francisco Opera as the title role in Eugene Onegin, Don Giovanni, and Il barbiere di Siviglia, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Fritz/Frank in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt under the baton of Donald Runnicles. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 in the role of General Rayevsky in Prokofiev’s War & Peace, and returned in 2011 as Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette. Additional operatic performances in the United States include Il barbiere di Siviglia with Los Angeles Opera, San Diego Opera, and Opera Colorado; Don Giovanni with Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera and New Orleans Opera; La bohème with Lyric Opera of Kansas City; Faust with Minnesota Opera and New Orleans Opera; and Les Pêcheurs de Perles with Florida Grand Opera.
A regular performer across Europe, Meachem has made recent debuts with the Vienna State Opera as the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Opéra National de Paris as the title role in Britten’s Billy Budd, Bayerische Staatsoper as Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Teatro Real de Madrid in the world premier of El Viaje a Simorgh by José María Sánchez-Verdúand, and with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Aeneas in Dido & Aeneas, which was released on DVD in 2009 on the Opus Arte label. Additional performances in Europe include Orestes in Iphigenie en Tauride, and Fritz/Frank in Korngold’s Die tote Stadtwith the Teatro Real de Madrid, Wolfram von Eschenbach in Tannhäuser with Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse, the title role in Eugene Onegin with Opéra national de Montpellier, and the title role in Don Giovanni with the Glyndebourne Festival.
In 2013 Meachem toured in a concert version of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta with performances in eleven of Europe’s most important musical centers including Vienna, Munich, Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Additional concert performances in Europe include the Fauré Requiem with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under Seiji Ozawa, with whom he also performed Wolfram inTannhäuser at the Saito Kinen Festival in Tokyo, and Carmina Burana with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. In the United States, Meachem has sung with the St. Louis Symphony in Carmina Burana and Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony in concert performances of Gilbert and Sullivan’sIolanthe, the American Symphony Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Ferdinand Hiller’s oratorio The Destruction of Jerusalem at Avery Fisher Hall, the New York Philharmonic in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion under Kurt Masur, and with the St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Seattle Symphonies in performances of Carmina Burana.
Born in North Carolina, Lucas Meachem studied music at Appalachian State University, the Eastman School of Music and Yale University before becoming an Adler fellow with the San Francisco Opera. He currently makes his home in New York City.x