At Seattle’s International Wagner Competition in 2014, tenor Issachah Savage won First Prize, Audience Prize, and the Orchestra Favorite award. As a member of San Francisco’s Merola Opera Program, he performed a varied repertoire including scenes from Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah, Verdi’s Otello, and Wagner’s Lohengrin, Die Walküre, and Parsifal. Mr. Savage’s operatic highlights in recent seasons include his debut as Bacchus in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at Seattle Opera, his Metropolitan Opera debut as Don Riccardo in Verdi’s Ernani, his Los Angeles Opera debut as Narraboth in Strauss’s Salome, his recent return to that company as the lead role in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, and his first Siegmund in Die Walküre at the Canadian Opera Company. At Austin Lyric Opera he has appeared as the title role in Otello and as Radames in Verdi’s Aida. The latter role also marked his debut at Houston Grand Opera. In Europe he has appeared as Bacchus at the Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse, as Siegmund in Die Walküre with the Opéra National de Bordeaux, and as the High Priest in Mozart’s Idomeneo at the 2019 Salzburg Festival.
Mr. Savage has appeared with the Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Dallas, Baltimore, Toronto, San Antonio, and Melbourne symphonies; the Opera Orchestra of New York; the New York, Los Angeles, Rotterdam, and National philharmonics; the Cleveland Orchestra; and at the Aspen Music Festival. Tonight marks his Philadelphia Orchestra debut.
Mr. Savage has received a number of prestigious awards from institutions including the Wagner Societies of New York, Washington, D.C., and Northern California; the Licia Albanese International Puccini Foundation; and the Olga Forrai and Gerda Lissner foundations. He was also the first ever Scholar Artist of the Marian Anderson Society of Philadelphia. Current and future seasons include his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut and his return to the Metropolitan Opera, as well as concert appearances with the Danish National, San Francisco, and National symphonies, and the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo.