About this Artist

In the 2011/12 season, tenor MATTHEW PLENK made his debuts at the Kansas City Opera as Ferrando in Così fan tutte and the Virginia Opera as Nanki-Poo in The Mikado, and returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Jenik in The Makropoulos Case. Upcoming events include his debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Salome in Cleveland and Carnegie Hall, the Des Moines Metro Opera as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, and LA Opera as the Steersman in Der fliegende Holländer.

A recent graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Plenk made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2007/08 season as the Sailor’s Voice in Tristan und Isolde under the baton of James Levine, a role he repeated under the baton of Daniel Barenboim. He has since returned to the Met as Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor, the Song Seller in Il tabarro, and Marcellus in Hamlet, and appeared as Arturo in the Met’s 2011 tour of Japan. Other past opera engagements have included Ferrando at the Atlanta Opera; Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni at the Boston Lyric Opera; and Ferrando, Nanki-Poo, Rodolfo in La bohème, Flute in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Kudrjáš in Janáček’s Kat’a Kabanová with the Yale Opera.

Plenk made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble, singing the Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer and duets by Schumann. Other concert engagements have included the Shepherd in Oedipus rex with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (with James Levine) and the Philadelphia Orchestra (with Charles Dutoit); his debut at the Tanglewood Festival as Iopas in Berlioz’ Les Troyens with James Levine conducting; and appearances with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, the Hartford Symphony, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Los Angeles-based Musica Angelica, the Connecticut Chamber Orchestra, the University of North Carolina Symphony, and the Yale Philharmonia conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

In 2005 Plenk was one of 16 singers invited to work with Naxos Records and Yale University in a collaborative project to record the complete songs of Charles Ives.

Plenk is a Samling Scholar and holds a bachelor’s degree from the Hartt School of Music and a master’s degree from Yale University. His many awards include Grand Finalist in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, First Place winner of the Five Towns Music Competition, and Grand Prize winner at the Music Lovers Competition.