Hector Vásquez

Baritone Hector Vásquez sings George Benton in Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally at HGO this winter. His past HGO credits include the title role of Verdi’s Rigoletto and Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca at Miller Outdoor Theatre, the Forester in Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Alvaro in the world premiere and revival performances of Florencia en el Amazonas by Daniel Catán, which is available on CD from Albany records. Mr. Vásquez was program director of the Houston Grand Opera Studio from 2006–08. The California native has performed frequently with the Metropolitan Opera since his debut in 1995 as Beaumarchais in the world premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano. Other Met credits include appearances in Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s Rigoletto and La traviata, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, and Johann Strauss’s The Merry Widow. He has appeared at San Francisco Opera as both Marcello and Schaunard in Puccini’s La bohème, Sciarrone in Puccini’s Tosca, and in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the world premiere of Conrad Sousa’s Dangerous Liaisons. The baritone made an acclaimed European debut as Germont in Verdi’s La traviata with the Belgian Festival en Plein Air. He has served as adjunct Professor of Voce at the University of Southern California and California State University, Los Angeles.