Samuel Ramey

Samuel Ramey (born March 28, 1942) is an American operatic bass and voice actor. At the height of his career, he was greatly admired for his range and versatility, having possessed a sufficiently accomplished bel canto technique which enabled him to sing the music of Handel, Mozart and Rossini but with enough vocal power to handle the more overtly dramatic roles in Verdi, Puccini, and Meyerbeer operas.

Early life

Ramey graduated from Colby High School in Colby, Kansas in 1960. He studied music in high school and in college at Kansas State University, as well as at Wichita State with Arthur Newman. At Kansas State, he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Ramey was in the chorus of Don Giovanni in 1963, with Norman Treigle in the title role, while studying with the Central City Opera in Central City, Colorado. After being an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he worked for an academic publisher in New York City before he had his first breakthrough while at the New York City Opera debuting on March 11, 1973, as Zuniga in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen. He took over that role as well as the Faustian devils in Gounod's Faust and Boito's Mefistofele, which was vacated by the early death of Treigle.

As his repertoire expanded he worked extensively in European theaters notably in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, Milan, and Vienna in addition to summer festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne, Pesaro, and Salzburg.

Later career In January 1984, Ramey made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Handel's Rinaldo. He became a fixture at the Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the New York City Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (Attila, The Rake's Progress, Mefistofele) since then. In July 1985 he was cast as Bertram in the historic revival in Paris of Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable.

Ramey has sung in Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro and, in the bel canto repertoire, in Rossini's Semiramide, The Barber of Seville, Il Turco in Italia, L'italiana in Algeri, and La Gazza Ladra; in Donizetti's Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor and Bellini's I puritani. In the dramatic repertoire, Ramey has been acclaimed for his "Three Devils": Boito's Mefistofele, Gounod's Faust and Berlioz's dramatic legend Damnation of Faust. Other dramatic roles of his have included Verdi's Nabucco, Don Carlo, I masnadieri, I Lombardi and Jérusalem, as well as Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (he portrayed all four villains).

In 1990, he sang the role of Joe in Jerome Kern's Show Boat in a concert performance at Avery Fisher Hall with Jerry Hadley and Frederica von Stade. A number of previously obscure operas with strong bass/bass-baritone roles have been revived solely for Ramey, such as Verdi's Attila, Rossini's Maometto II and Massenet's Don Quichotte. He provided the voice for The Beast, the main antagonist of the 2014 animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall. In 1996, he gave a concert at New York's Avery Fisher Hall titled "A Date with the Devil" in which he sang 14 arias representing the core of this repertory. He continued to tour with the program throughout the world. In 2000, he presented the concert at Munich's Gasteig Concert Hall. The performance was recorded live and was released on compact disc in summer 2002. In 2007, Ramey appeared with Wichita Grand Opera as Baron Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, opposite Annalisa Raspagliosi in the title role, under the baton of Nayden Todorov.

He formerly served as a member of the faculty at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts and is currently a distinguished professor of Opera at Wichita State University's School of Music. He was named an inaugural member of the WSU College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame in 2015. He is a national patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. He reprised the title role of "Duke Bluebeard" in Opera Omaha's production of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle in April 2013 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Ramey portrayed the Beast in the 2014 animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall, for which he also provided bass vocals and performed the song "Come Wayward Souls".

Recordings Ramey has made an exceptionally high number of recordings documenting many of his main operatic roles as well as collections of miscellaneous arias, other classical pieces, and crossover discs of popular American music. He has appeared on television and video productions of the Met's productions of Carmen and Bluebeard's Castle, San Francisco's production of Mefistofele, Glyndebourne's production of The Rake's Progress, and Salzburg's production of Don Giovanni.

Family He married his third wife, soprano Lindsey Larsen, on June 29, 2002. They have one son.

Repertoire RepertoireRole OperaComposer Bluebeard Bluebeard's Castle BartókDr Pangloss Candide BernsteinOroveso Norma BelliniSir Giorgio I puritani BelliniMéphistophélès La damnation de Faust BerliozEscamillo Carmen BizetMefistofele Mefistofele BoitoJohn ClaggartBilly BuddBrittenRiccardo III Riccardo III CanepaLa Père Louise CharpentierEnrico VIII Anna Bolena DonizettiRaimondo Bidebent Lucia di Lammermoor DonizettiAndrea Cornaro Caterina Cornaro DonizettiOlin Susannah FloydMéphistophélès Faust GounodArgante Rinaldo HandelGaribaldo Rodelinda HandelIl Re di Scozia Ariodante HandelCadmusSomnus Semele HandelIdreno Armida HaydnLe Comte Des Grieux Manon MassenetLe Comte Chérubin MassenetDon Quichotte Don Quichotte MassenetBertram Robert le diable MeyerbeerArchibald L'amore dei tre re MontemezziFigaro Le nozze di Figaro MozartDon GiovanniLeporello Don Giovanni MozartSarastro Die Zauberflöte MozartBoris GodunovPimen Boris Godunov MussorgskyCoppeliusDapertuttoLindorfMiracle Les contes d'Hoffmann OffenbachAlvise Badoero La Gioconda PonchielliKutuzov War and Peace ProkofievColline La bohème PucciniBarone ScarpiaCesare Angelotti Tosca PucciniRambaldo La rondine PucciniTimur Turandot PucciniGaudenzio Il signor Bruschino RossiniMustafà L'italiana in Algeri RossiniSelim Il turco in Italia RossiniDon Basilio Il barbiere di Siviglia RossiniElmiro Otello RossiniPodestà Gottardo La gazza ladra RossiniDouglas d'Angus La donna del lago RossiniMaometto secondo Maometto secondo RossiniAssur Semiramide RossiniLord Sidney Il viaggio a Reims RossiniMoïse Mosè in Egitto RossiniLe Gouverneur Le comte Ory RossiniUn vecchio ebreo Samson et Dalila Saint-SaënsOrest Elektra StraussNick Shadow The Rake's Progress StravinskyPrince Gremin Eugene Onegin TchaikovskyClaudius Hamlet ThomasOberto Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio VerdiZaccaria Nabucco VerdiPagano I Lombardi alla prima crociata VerdiJacopo Loredano I due Foscari VerdiAttilaLeone Attila VerdiBanco Macbeth VerdiMassimiliano Moor I masnadieri VerdiComte de Toulouse Jérusalem VerdiWurm Luisa Miller VerdiMonteroneSparafucile Rigoletto VerdiPadre Guardiano La forza del destino VerdiFilippo IIIl Grande Inquisitore Don Carlos VerdiRamfis Aida Verdi

Select discography Bernstein: On the Town, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Deutsche Grammophon Handel: Messiah, conducted by Andrew Davis, EMI Massenet: Chérubin, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, RCA Victor Red Seal Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Georg Solti, Decca Rossini: Otello, conducted by Jesús López Cobos, Philips Rossini: The Rossini Bicentennial Birthday Gala, conducted by Roger Norrington, EMI Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song, RCA Victor Red Seal A Salute to American Music (Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala XVI, 1991), conducted by James Conlon, RCA Victor Red Seal Mozart: Don Giovanni, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, Deutsche Grammophon

Select videography The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, conducted by James Levine, Deutsche Grammophon