Thomas Hampson
American singer Thomas Hampson has been one of the world's top opera stars since the early 1990s, with more than 200 recordings to his credit. Hampson combines a mellifluous tone that has proven remarkably durable, a powerful top, and charisma that saw him named one of the world's 50 most beautiful people by the U.S. magazine People in 1993.
Hampson was born on June 28, 1955, in Elkhart, Indiana, but grew up in Spokane, Washington. He and his two older sisters sang in church, but at first, he was unsure of his career choice: he attended Eastern Washington University, graduating with a government major, but also earned a voice degree from Fort Wright College. Summer classes at the Music Academy of the West with baritone Martial Singher and a second-place finish in the Metropolitan Opera's Western Region auditions in 1980 tipped the scales. Hampson traveled to Europe for auditions, studying with contralto Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and joining the company of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf in 1981. Engaged for bigger and better roles, he joined the Zurich Opera in 1984, gave a Wigmore Hall debut recital touted by Schwarzkopf, made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Count Almaviva in 1986, and by the late '80s was clearly one of opera's top rising stars. Performing in several famed readings of Mahler works conducted late in life by Leonard Bernstein cemented his reputation; a 1986 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in A minor with Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic was an early recording triumph.
Since then, there is hardly a major world opera house or concert venue in which he has not appeared. Hampson has had a flair for highly visible public performances, such as a 1991 Live from Lincoln Center television broadcast of Copland's Old American Songs with the New York Philharmonic and a 2009 recital at the Supreme Court of the United States, populated by opera-loving justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. Yet he has also championed new music, giving world premieres of operas by Richard Danielpour, Michael Daugherty, and others. He has a repertory of nearly 100 operas, spanning the genre's entire temporal range, taking up new darker-toned roles such as Amfortas in Wagner's Parsifal and Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca in middle age. He has continued to specialize in Mahler, whose large-scale but lyric music fits his voice beautifully.
Yet Hampson has also been clearly defined as an American singer, performing repertory from that country, teaching and serving on the board of the Manhattan School of Music, and winning induction into the elite American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. That year, he participated in the first broadcast of classical music on a streaming mobile phone app, teaching a master class in Mahler song at the Manhattan School of Music. He has also been open to crossover projects, such as a CNN television musical exchange with South African vocal harmony group Ladysmith Black Mambazo in 2012. The pace of Hampson's recording career did not slow in the late 2010s and early 2020s; the year 2018 saw his debut on the Cedille label with a song recital, Songs from Chicago. In 2023, he released a pair of albums, appearing on a Capriccio recording of Kurt Weill's cantata Propheten and issuing an album of Liszt orchestral songs on Aparté.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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The Very Best Of Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on Jan 17, 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Danielpour: Songs of Solitude & War Songs
Thomas Hampson, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Giancarlo Guerrero
Classical - Released by Naxos on Oct 14, 2016
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Meyerbeer Songs: Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on May 1, 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
An American New Year's Eve
New York Philharmonic, Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on Mar 29, 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi Operas: Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on Apr 10, 2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro - Highlights
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Jan 1, 1980
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Cellist of Venice
Humour/Spoken Word - Released by Atlantic Crossing Records on Aug 12, 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Sir Simon Rattle, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Peter Seiffert, Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by Warner Classics on Jan 1, 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
On the Cutting Edge: New Music from CONTACT!
New York Philharmonic, Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on Aug 31, 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Songs By Richard Strauss - Notturno
Thomas Hampson, Wolfram Rieger
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Jan 1, 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schubert: Hyperion Song Edition 14 – Schubert & the Classics
Thomas Hampson, Graham Johnson
Classical - Released by Hyperion on Apr 1, 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Release 12: Mozart, Mahler And More
New York Philharmonic, Thomas Hampson
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on Aug 30, 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on Jan 1, 2013
Gramophone Editor's Choice16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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For Lenny, Episode 9: A Simple Song
Classical - Released by Sony Worldwide on Jan 21, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo