About
About
About
Baritone Ryan Thorn is gaining attention as an emerging artist of great promise. As a member of the Portland Opera Resident Artist program (2016-17), he performed Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Taddeo in the Portland Opera premiere of L'italiana in Algeri, Schaunard / Marcello cover in La bohème, Birdseller and Jonas Fogg / Sweeney cover in Sweeney Todd, and First Priest / Papageno cover in Die Zauberflöte. Mr. Thorn returns to Portland Opera in their 2018 festival season to make his role debut as Dandini in La Cenerentola.
Accomplished in a variety of serious and comic roles, Mr. Thorn's repertoire includes the title characters of Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Viva la Mamma (the outrageous stage mother role of Donna Agata). He enjoys a rewarding relationship with Pacific Opera Project, with whom he has performed Marcello in La bohème, Angelotti in Tosca, the Musiklehrer in Ariadne auf Naxos, and the dual role of Giove and Giove in Diana in La Calisto, for which he was praised as "the musical and dramatic anchor of the production." He has also debuted with Madison Opera as both Moralès and Le Dancaïre in Carmen, and has collaborated with composer Mark Carlson and librettist Bruce Olstad to create the character of Arthur Dimmesdale in their forthcoming opera, The Scarlet Letter.
Equally at home in concert and recital repertoire, Mr. Thorn has performed the baritone solo in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as a 2015 Vocal Fellow at Music Academy of the West, and debuted with the Pasadena Master Chorale as the baritone soloist in Carmina Burana. He has appeared in recital under the auspices of Portland Opera and as part of Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert series, hosted by legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.
Mr. Thorn's talent has been acknowledged in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, in which he was a 2016 Oregon District Winner. An alumnus of the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, he has had the privilege of honing his Lieder interpretation with such master teachers as Elly Ameling, Edith Wiens, Helmut Deutsch, and Julius Drake. Mr. Thorn earned his MM from the University of California Los Angeles, where he studied with Vladimir Chernov, and his BM from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Press
Press
PRESS
“Baritone Ryan Thorn as Marcello was a complete delight. His tall and solid form executed the required physical comedy with ease... Thorn so looked and acted the effortlessly cool hipster part that one suspects he actually is a hipster.”
– RD Foster (www.examiner.com)
“Ryan Thorn’s voice (Angelotti) was steel-cut and bell clear. He anchored the stage and entire room with its granite power. I longed to hear more of it.”
– RD Foster (www.examiner.com)
“Thorn hilariously hams it up as Giove, setting the tone for La Calisto from start to finish. His versatile voice is almost equally at home in the falsetto he adopts for his Diana disguise as for the commanding baritone he wields so effortlessly as king of the gods... Thorn is the musical and dramatic anchor of the production.”
– Barnaby Hughes (Stage and Cinema)
“In ‘Marriage of Figaro,’ (we saw the second-night cast), the heavenly and masculine baritone voice of lead character Ryan Thorn as Figaro, and that of the Count Luvi Avendano are very pleasing and strong. Their comic chops help carry the show.”
–George Umano (Splash Magazine)
“Throughout, the composer uses interludes with Tim the Candy Butcher to break up the story. Thorn’s comedic abilities and booming voice brought to life the less-than-two-minute monologue he has each time he arrives, hawking apples (later, candy, and later still, magazines) to all the passengers. Thorn is so jovial and home-grown in his delivery, that one really wishes we could interrupt the opera and buy an apple from him. ”
– Yilin Hsu Wentlandt (Singerpreneur)
“PO resident artist Ryan Thorn does a bang-up job of playing Taddeo, an Italian suitor of Isabella who’s wrapped in a rug with a lampshade on his head for most of the opera. He has a full-on baritone and plays his role with a wry, and sometimes naïve, sensibility. It’s hard to keep a straight face when he’s onstage.”
– Angela Allen (Oregon ArtsWatch)
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