Jamez McCorkle
The American tenor Jamez McCorkle is a natural musician and a trained pianist who attracted widespread attention following his critically acclaimed performance in the title role of the Pulitzer Prize–winning opera Omar (2023), which premiered at the Spoleto Festival in 2022 and was subsequently performed at LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Carolina Performing Arts Center. His recent successes in roles such as Bacchus in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Laca in Jenůfa have led to invitations to make debuts at the Royal Ballet & Opera, Washington National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Hamburg State Opera, and the LA Philharmonic.
In the 2025/26 season, McCorkle appears as Siegmund three times: with Daniel Harding and the Orchestre de Paris, with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic. He will also make several important debuts, including at the Royal Ballet & Opera as Grigory in Boris Godunov, and at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, where he debuts both as Parsifal and as Erik in The Flying Dutchman. He also returns as Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Hamburg State Opera and appears at the Hungarian State Opera as Florestan in Fidelio.
In the previous season, McCorkle made two significant role debuts as Florestan in Fidelio at Washington National Opera—a role he also performed at the Opéra national de Bordeaux—and as Siegmund in Die Walküre at Santa Fe Opera. Another highlight was his house debut at Hamburg State Opera as Bacchus in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s highly anticipated new production of Ariadne auf Naxos. On the concert stage, he appeared twice with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem and as Froh in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, as well as with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Recent highlights include the premiere of Omar at San Francisco Opera with McCorkle in the title role—his debut at the company—Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, Laca in Robert Carsen’s production of Jenůfa at the Vlaamse Opera, the Duke of Cornwall in Lear at the Bavarian State Opera, and his house and role debut as Telemaco in a new production of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at Theater Basel. He has also performed Peter, the Honey Man, in the highly acclaimed production of Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera, Leonard Woolf in Kevin Puts’s opera The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Tamino in The Magic Flute at Kentucky Opera, and Lensky in Eugene Onegin at Michigan Opera Theatre.
On the concert stage, he has performed Handel’s Messiah at the U.S. Naval Academy, sung Froh in Das Rheingold with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi, performed Das Lied von der Erde with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and returned to the Spoleto Festival in an innovative staged version of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, in which he performed the famous song cycle while accompanying himself on the piano. In addition, he has performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Spoleto Festival and Britten’s War Requiem with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
McCorkle was a member of the International Opera Studio in Zurich and participated in the Salzburg Festival Young Artist Program in 2017. He was a finalist in the prestigious Neue Stimmen Competition in 2019 and has won numerous prizes and competitions, including the George London Competition, the Sullivan Foundation, the Brava! Opera Competition, the National Opera Association Vocal Competition, and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (Gulf Coast Region).
