Thomas Hampson (1955 – ), an American baritone, was born on June 28, 1955, in Elkhart, Indiana, United States. He graduated from Eastern Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in 1977. In 1978, he won the “Lotte Lehmann” Award. In 1982, he attracted widespread attention by playing the role of Guglielmo in “Così fan tutte” at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and suddenly became one of the most outstanding baritones in contemporary America, performing in the world’s most prestigious opera houses.
Thomas Hampson has a wide range of roles in the opera repertoires he sings, covering operas from Rossini to Verdi and Puccini, and from Monteverdi to Britten and Henze. He has played the leading roles in Rossini’s “William Tell”, Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”, and Massenet’s “Werther”. He has also participated in Busoni’s “Doctor Faustus”, Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet”, Verdi’s “Macbeth”, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, and Friedrich Cerha’s “The Giant of Steinfeld” (world premiere).
Meanwhile, Thomas Hampson is also a popular folk singer and an art song singer who is good at performing the works of Schubert, Hugo Wolf, Joseph Marx, Strauss, and Mahler.
