Praised for performances that are ‘powerfully acted and ideally sung’ (PBS Chicago), Jonathan Michie returns to the Leipzig Opera as a guest artist in the 2025/26 season, debuting the role of Guglielmo in a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, directed by Katharina Thoma and conducted by Matthias Foremny. He will be featured as a soloist for American Lyric Theater’s 20th Anniversary Gala, singing modern operatic excerpts including an aria from Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Lincoln in the Bardo. Michie will debut with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra as the Bass soloist in Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, conducted by Jonathan Darlington. He continues his relationship with the Thomanerchor and Gewandhaus Orchestra, singing Bach’s BWV 127 under the direction of Thomaskantor Andreas Reize. Further concert engagements this season include Michie singing the title roles in Handel’s Saul with the Hamburg Symphony Choir and Mendelssohn’s Paulus at the St. Nikolai-Kirche zu Elmshorn. He will also be the featured soloist for the 26th annual benefit concert for children’s cancer research in Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, singing Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel with orchestra.
Sought after as an interpreter of contemporary repertoire, Michie recently originated the role of Richard Loving in the world premiere of Damien Geter and Jessica Murphy Moo’s Loving v. Virginia. Commissioned by the Richmond Symphony and Virginia Opera for their 50th anniversary season, the opera was directed by Denyce Graves and conducted by Adam Turner. He also debuted the role of Alan Turing in the world premiere of Justine Chen and David Simpatico’s The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing at Chicago Opera Theater, conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya and directed by Peter Rothstein.
Michie was a soloist at the Leipzig Opera for more than a decade where he sang the vast majority of the lyric baritone repertoire. His roles in Leipzig included the title role in Don Giovanni, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Dandini in La Cenerentola, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Alvaro in Il viaggio a Reims,Marcello in La bohème, Belcore in L’elisir d’amore, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Silvio in Pagliacci, Ping in Turandot, Sonora in La fanciulla del West, Olivier in Capriccio, Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos, Kühleborn in Undine, Ottokar in Der Freischütz, Der Einäugige in Die Frau ohne Schatten, Konrad Nachtigall in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Valentin in Faust,Le conseiller de Thou in Cinq-Mars, Ned Keene in Peter Grimes, Sam in Trouble in Tahiti, and the Gamekeeper in Rusalka, among many others.
Elsewhere on the operatic stage, Michie has performed as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Donald in Billy Budd, Noye in Noye’s Fludde, and the Vicar in Albert Herring with the Los Angeles Opera; Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette, Ping in Turandot, and Masetto in Don Giovanni with Florida Grand Opera; Prince Paul in La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and Baron Douphol in La traviata with Santa Fe Opera; Dandini in La Cenerentola with Seattle Opera; Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Israeli Opera; Belcore in L’elisir d’amore at Theater Bremen; Donald in Billy Budd with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma; Valentin in Faust at Teatro Comunale Bolzano; Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Beijing Music Festival, and Masetto in Don Giovanni with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera to cover Papageno in their production of Die Zauberflöte.
He made his European debut singing Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the Slovenian Philharmonic. He has sung numerous Bach motets with the Thomanerchor and Gewandhausorchester, including BWV 33, 248/4, and 176, in Bach’s St. Thomas Church. Further concert engagements have included excerpts from Die Zauberflöte with the Gewandhausorchester, Rochester in Lortzing’s Zum Großadmiral with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with both the Gewandhaus and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestras, Fortitudo in Haydn’s Applausus at the Goethe-Theater Bad Lauchstädt, Bach’s Ich habe genug BWV 82 with Musica Sacra in New York and Orff’s Carmina Burana with the National Chorale (USA).
As an apprentice artist with the Santa Fe Opera, he debuted as the Vicar in Albert Herring and Count Dominik in Arabella. He sang his first performances of Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia as a member of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, in addition to an excerpt of Adams’ Doctor Atomic as J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has also performed with the DNT und Staatskapelle Weimar, Oper Halle, Chautauqua Opera, Spoleto Festival U.S.A., the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, City Center Encores!, Finger Lakes Opera and Opera Saratoga.
Michie has collaborated with well-known conductors including James Conlon, Ulf Schirmer, Sir Andrew Davis, Jonathan Darlington, Lidiya Yankovskaya, Giedrė Šlekytė, David Reiland, Andrea Sanguineti, Ramón Tebar, and Gary Thor Wedow. Significant directors with whom he has worked include Stephen Wadsworth, Deborah Warner, Rolando Villazón, Katharina Thoma, Michiel Dijkema, Balázs Kovalik, Lindy Hume, Paul Curran, Renaud Doucet, Martin Lyngbo and Anthony Pilavachi.
Jonathan Michie has received awards from the International Robert Schumann Competition, the William Matheus Sullivan Foundation, the Gerda Lissner Foundation, the George London Foundation, the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation and the Liederkranz Foundation, among others. He is the youngest first prize winner in the history of the Kurt Weill Foundation’s Lotte Lenya Competition. He holds Master and Bachelor of Music degrees from the Eastman School of Music and has appeared in Off-Broadway and regional theater as a member of Actors’ Equity.
