Artist Profile
Justin Ryan is delighted to return to Chance Theater after making his debut in last season’s Sweeney Todd. The operatic baritone has worked most recently with Detroit Opera, New York City Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera San Jose, Long Beach Opera, and the American Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center, garnering critical acclaim as an accomplished interpreter of American men, including a vituperous Edward Hopper in Stewart Wallace/Michael Korie’s surrealist fantasy, Hopper’s Wife (NYCO), a racially motivated lead investigator in Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer winning Central Park Five (Detroit, LBO), the impossibly positioned first mate Starbuck in Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick (San Jose), tortured investment banker Edward in the world premiere of Iain Bell’s Stonewall (NYCO), and the pernicious truth-denying lawyer Roy Cohn in Peter Eotvos’s adaptation of Angels in America (NYCO). He won wide acclaim as the domineering 20th century visionary Walt Disney in the American premier of Phillip Glass’s The Perfect American (LBO, COT). Justin and wife Lara are long-time New Yorkers who now reside in Orange County.