Teacher

John Kuether, who has a master’s degree from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, performed on Broadway for ten years in The Phantom of the Opera. He also was a member of the cast of Phantom productions in Germany and Switzerland, and altogether has been a part of approximately 8,000 performances of the piece as a performer or resident director.

Among the opera companies John has sung with are the Vienna State Opera, La Scala,

the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, and a special favorite of his, the Santa Fe Opera, where he has performed in thirteen productions. John’s operatic roles include Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola, the four villains in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Escamillo in Carmen, and Don Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia,

A favorite music theater role is Cervantes/Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, and he

appeared in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene at the Theater des Westens in Berlin. He has

performed several Gilbert and Sullivan roles, including the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe,

the Mikado and Pooh-Bah in The Mikado, Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers, and the

Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance.

He has narrated several works with orchestra, including Bernstein’s Third Symphony

with the Seattle Symphony, conducted by Gerald Schwarz, Schoenberg’s A Survivor

from Warsaw with New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert, and the

Schumann/Lord Byron Manfred, in which he played the title role in staged productions

with the Seattle Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra, the second

conducted by Leon Botstein in Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York.

He has sung the bass solo in such orchestral works as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony,

Handel’s Messiah and Judas Maccabeus, Haydn’s Creation, and the Mozart Requiem.

John has shared the stage with such performers as Olivier and Tony Award winner Mark

Rylance and renowned opera stars Bryn Terfel, Frederika von Stade, Jose Carreras, Kiri

te Kanawa, and Tatiana Troyanos. He has worked with such directors as Tony award

winner Hal Prince, Stephen Wadsworth and Francesca Zambello, and with conductors

Leonard Bernstein, Nicolaus McGegan, Edo de Waart, Kent Nagano, and George

Manahan. He was chosen by Philip Glass to perform in the composer’s La Belle et la

Bête on European and American tours, Orphée at the American Repertory Theatre in

Cambridge, and in concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He can be heard on

recordings of A Quiet Place and West Side Story, both conducted by Maestro Bernstein,

and Glass’s La Belle et la Béte.

He has maintained a private voice studio in New York, served on the faculty of the Joop van der Ende Academy in Hamburg, one of the leading music theater training programs in Europe, and as Director of Voice and Opera at the Dallas Conservatory. He currently teaches Theatre Arts at Alcuin School in Dallas.