Ryan Speedo Green wins 2023 Beverly Sills Artist Award

April 25, 2023

The Metropolitan Opera recently named bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as the winner of the 2023 Beverly Sills Artist Award.

The annual $50,000 award recognizes extraordinarily gifted singers with rising careers at the Met.

The Glenn Gould Foundation community will recall Green’s transcendent performance of Mahler’s haunting “Urlicht” and Mozart’s lively “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi” with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra at the Glenn Gould Prize Gala Concert Honouring Jessye Norman in February 2019.

The Foundation has been honoured to consider Speedo (as he likes to be called) as a friend, since that memorable evening.

Established in 2006 by an endowment gift from the late Agnes Varis, a former Met board member, the award is given in honor of the legendary American soprano Beverly Sills.

A graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Green has been a fixture on the Met’s stage since 2012, and has been featured in major media, including on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

Most recently at the Met, Green made his first major role debut playing the young boxer Emile Griffith in Terence Blanchard’s Champion. The Glenn Gould Foundation sends congratulations to Speedo and looks forward to future collaborations.

At the Glenn Gould Prize Gala Concert Honouring Jessye Norman. Back row, l to r: tenor Rodrick Dixon, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, mezzo Wallis Guinta, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, conductor Donald Runnicles, soprano Pumeza Matshikiza, soprano Nina Stemme. Middle row, l to r: jazz vocalist Célice McLoran Salvant, jury chair Viggo Mortensen, soprano Jessye Norman. Front: pianist Sullivan Fortner.

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