Biography
Winner of a 2012-13 Sullivan Career Grant, rising tenor Jason Slayden has been celebrated for the warmth and beauty of his voice, as well as demonstrating “considerable subtly as an actor.”
This fall marked Jason’s international debut, which attracted much critical acclaim. As Rodolfo in Vancouver Opera’s La Boheme, critics praised him as a “heartfelt, note-perfect tenor,” and said, “His ‘Che gelida manina’ was refreshingly realistic, … and was dramatically as well as musically interesting.” Later this season, Jason debuts with Minnesota Opera in Thomas’s Hamlet as Laerte, and returns to Des Moines Metro Opera to premier his first Roméo in Roméo et Juliette. He was a Filene Young Artist with Wolf Trap Opera this summer, where he performed Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, a recital with pianist Steven Blier, and the tenor solo in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the National Symphony Orchestra. Future engagements include Rodolfo in La Boheme with Arizona Opera.
Mr. Slayden joined the Seattle Opera as a Young Artist for the 2011-2012 season, where he made his mainstage debut as Uldino in Verdi’s Atilla. In the Young Artist program he sang the title role in Massenet’s Werther and Ernesto in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. In 2011, Jason won the Gerda Lissner Foundation First Prize, a George London Foundation encouragement award, and was a Metropolitan Opera National council semi-finalist. The same year, Mr. Slayden returned to the Santa Fe Opera as a principal artist to sing the role of Andres in Berg’s Wozzeck and, at the very last minute, stepped in to sing two performances of La Bohème as Rodolfo. He was an apprentice artist at Santa Fe in the 2009 and 2010 seasons, where he was awarded the Donald Gramm Memorial Award and the Richard Tucker Memorial Award for apprentices.
In concert, Jason has performed as a soloist with the Dayton Philharmonic in Rossini’s Stabat Mater, with Seattle Youth Symphony in Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, with Utah Symphony Orchestra in Romeo et Juliette by Hector Berlioz, with Concert: Nova in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, and with Musica Sacra Cincinnati in the Gounod Messe Solennelle de Saint-Cecile.
