Sean Panikkar (born 17 September 1981) is an American operatic tenor. He has performed in many leading opera houses both nationally and internationally, including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Carnegie Hall, Salzburg Festival, as well as Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Fort Worth Opera,

Early years

Sean Panikkar was born and raised in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, the second son of Sri Lankan immigrants—a father of Sinhalese and Indian ancestry and a Tamil mother.[1] Panikkar first began studying voice as a high schooler with Juilliard-trained soprano Li Ping Liu.[2] At the University of Michigan he double majored in civil engineering and vocal performance for three years before committing himself entirely to music. At the School of Music, Theatre & Dance there he studied with Daniel Washington and Luretta Bybee and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in vocal performance.[3] He participated in the Merola training program of the San Francisco Opera in 2004[4] and held an Adler Fellow with that company in 2005 and 2006.[5]

Career

Panikkar has performed several roles with Metropolitan Opera, including Tybalt in Roméo et Juliette under the baton of Plácido Domingo, Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor conducted by Marco Armiliato, Brighella in Ariadne auf Naxos led by Kirill Petrenko, and Prunier in La rondine. Further credits include roles in The Queen of Spades, Le pauvre matelot, The Maid of Orleans, Manon Lescaut, Tristan und Isolde, Fidelio, Norma, and Die Zauberflöte with the San Francisco Opera, as well as Nabucco at Washington National Opera, the title role of Béatrice et Bénédict with Opera Boston, Weill's Lost in the Stars at the Glimmerglass Festival, Salome at Washington National Opera and the Saito Kinen Festival, and Lensky in Eugene Onegin and Count Almaviva in The Ghosts of Versailles with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

During the 2013/14 season, Panikkar sang Rodolfo in La bohème at the Royal Albert Hall in London,[6] Macduff in Macbeth at Palm Beach Opera,[7] and return engagements with Pittsburgh Opera as Tamino in The Magic Flute and with Fort Worth Opera as Nadir in Les pêcheurs de perles.[8] In the 2014/15 season, he sang in The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera[9] and in the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli's CO2 at Teatro alla Scala.[10]

In 2013, Panikkar was recruited on short notice to join the classical crossover trio FORTE during season eight of America's Got Talent.[11] Panikkar has released two albums as a member of FORTE: their self-titled debut in 2013, and The Future Classics in 2016.[12][13]

In March 2018 Panikkar sang the role of Greenhorn in Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick at the Pittsburgh Opera.[14][15] He then joined the Salzburg Festival in performances of The Bassarids,[16]. He was named "Artist of the Week" by Opernwelt prior to the anticipated Salzburg Festival debut.[17] He also plays the lead role of Gandhi in Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha.[18][19] Of his experience in that role he said:[20]

As the first brown person to sing Gandhi, it brought an extra level of emotion to some of the oppressive scenes that doesn’t necessarily come across quite as powerfully when a white singer is doing it.

Panikkar began 2019 with a four-night run of the reunited AGT finalist lineup of FORTE at the Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center in The Villages, Florida. He then visited his family's homeland of Sri Lanka for the first time to present song recitals with soprano Tharanga Goonatilleke and pianist Rohan De Silva.[20] Panikkar began May with the performance of Nadir in Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at Kansas City Lyric Opera.[21][22]

In summer 2019, Panikkar starred in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Festival d’Aix-En-Provence.[23] In the fall at the Komische Oper Berlin he reprised the role of Dionysus in The Bassarids.[24][25][26] In January 2020 he sang the role of José in Bizet's Carmen at the English National Opera.[27]

Although the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of many of his engagements, in October 2020 at Michigan Opera Theater in Detroit he sang the role of Siegfried in an abridged version of Wagner's Götterdämmerung, a radical reinterpretation of that opera set in a parking garage and viewed by audience members driving through in cars.[28]

On November 22, 2022, he sang the role of Leonard Woolf in the stage premiere of Kevin Puts's opera The Hours at the Metropolitan Opera.[29] The performance of December 10 was video-cast as part of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series.[30]

Panikkar has been honored by the George London Foundation with the 2007 Robert Jacobson Memorial Award and a 2009 George London Award; he was a First Prize winner of the 2010 Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition, and second-place winner in the 2009 International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition.[31][32]

Discography

As a member of FORTE
  • FORTE (2013)
  • The Future Classics (2016)

Notes

    References

    1. ↑ Daniel, Smriti (May 8, 2016). "Hitting a personal note in JFK". The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). Retrieved May 8, 2016.
    2. ↑ "Rising Stars: An Interview with Sean Panikkar, Part 1" (Interview). Interviewed by William Burnett. Operawarhorses.com. October 27, 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
    3. ↑ "Ten Questions with Sean Panikkar". Madison Opera (Interview). October 31, 2017. Retrieved October 30, 2020.
    4. ↑ "Program Alumni". Merola Opera Program. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
    5. ↑ "Adler Fellowship Alumni". San Francisco Opera. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
    6. ↑ Hall, George (March 2, 2014). "La Bohème review – 'Jessica Rose Cambio's Mimì offers a grandly expressive soprano'". The Guardian. Retrieved June 3, 2014.
    7. ↑ Erstein, Hap (January 23, 2014). "Pop-opera star appears in Macbeth at Palm Beach Opera". The Palm Beach Post. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
    8. ↑ Weuste, David (April 20, 2014). "Sean Panikkar Wows at Fort Worth Opera – The Pearl Fishers". OperaPulse. Retrieved June 3, 2014.
    9. ↑ Croan, Robert (February 2014). "Die Zauberflöte". Opera News. 78 (8). Retrieved March 18, 2014.
    10. ↑ "Nihilistic Pessimism: CO2 at the Teatro alla Scala". OperaTraveller. May 25, 2015. Retrieved July 20, 2015.
    11. ↑ Burnett, William (December 17, 2015). "Singing Opera and Unexpectedly Famous: A Conversation with Sean Panikkar". Opera Warhorses. Retrieved February 27, 2016.
    12. ↑ Weatherford, Mike (December 25, 2013). "Internet helps singers find harmony, TV exposure and their own Vegas show". Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
    13. ↑ FORTE. "Forte Tenors from America's Got Talent: Updates". PledgeMusic. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
    14. ↑ Twinam, John S. (March 19, 2018). "Pittsburgh Opera 2017-18 – Moby Dick: Jake Heggie's Masterpiece Gets Tremendous Performances From Honeywell, Panikkar, Mayes, Among Others". OperaWire. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
    15. ↑ Reynolds, Jeremy (March 18, 2018). "Review: Pittsburgh Opera pits man against nature in 'Moby-Dick'". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
    16. ↑ Bezgachina, Katerina (August 22, 2018). "Salzburg Festival 2018 Review: The Bassarids Sean Panikkar & Russell Braun Bring Krzysztof Warlikowsky's Strong Vision To Life". Opera Wire.
    17. ↑ "Artist Of The Week: Sean Panikkar Rising Star Tenor Makes His Anticipated Debut At the Salzburg Festival". Opera Wire. August 13, 2018.
    18. ↑ Joshua Barone (November 5, 2018). "Two Ways of Looking at Philip Glass's 'Satyagraha'". New York Times.
    19. ↑ Gordon Williams. "Los Angeles Opera 2018-19 Review: Satyagraha Philip Glass' Opera Is a Transcendent Experience About Opera's Effect On Our Social Conscience". Opera Wire.
    20. 1 2 Daniel, Smriti (February 24, 2019). "The music brought him home". The Sunday Times Sri Lanka. Retrieved October 31, 2020.
    21. ↑ "BWW Review: THE PEARL FISHERS at KC Lyric Opera". Broadway World.
    22. ↑ "The stunning "The Pearl Fishers" opera at Kauffman Center". Kansas City Live. May 2, 2019.
    23. ↑ "10 Must See Operas For The Summer Season 2019". OperaWire. April 29, 2019.
    24. ↑ "The Bassarids | Operavision". operavision.eu. Retrieved 2023-10-17.
    25. ↑ Staff, Operawire (2019-10-20). "Komische Oper Berlin 2019-20 Review: The Bassarids". OperaWire. Retrieved 2023-10-17.
    26. ↑ Walls, Seth Colter (October 28, 2019). "One of Opera's Great Directors, Binge-Worthy in Berlin". New York Times. Retrieved October 31, 2020.
    27. ↑ Wilson, Flora (February 3, 2020). "Carmen review – revival's real stars are Peleggi and the ENO orchestra". The Guardian. Retrieved October 31, 2020.
    28. ↑ Ross, Alex (October 26, 2020). "Wagner's Götterdämmerung in a Detroit Parking Garage". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 30, 2020. Sean Panikkar, a onetime lyric tenor whose voice has lately taken on commanding power and weight, proved thrilling in his brief appearance as Siegfried: I only wish that the abridgment had given him more to do.
    29. ↑ Zachary Woolfe (23 November 2022), "Review: In The Hours, Prima Donnas and Emotions Soar", The New York Times.
    30. ↑ Met program for the performance of The Hours on December 10, 2022. Retrieved December 15, 2022.
    31. ↑ Staff (September 20, 2009). "Sean Panikkar a young tenor of Sri Lankan heritage emerges in U.S. opera scene" (PDF). Asian Tribune. Retrieved May 8, 2016.
    32. ↑ Daniel, Smriti (August 18, 2013). "Being Asian is an asset in opera". The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). Retrieved March 18, 2014.
    33. ↑ Sean Panikkar at IMDb
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