Kostas Smoriginas

Lithuanian bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme 2007–09, singing roles including Alidoro (La Cenerentola), Marquis d’Obigny (La traviata), Angelotti (Tosca), Bello (La fanciulla del West) and Schlemil (Les Contes d’Hoffmann). He has since returned to sing Colline (La bohème), Don Alvaro (Il viaggio a Reims in the Jette Parker Young Artists Tenth Anniversary Concert), Escamillo (Carmen) and Andrei Shichelkalov (Boris Godunov) for The Royal Opera. In the 2017/18 Season he returns to sing Escamillo and Herald (Lohengrin).

Smoriginas studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and represented Lithuania in the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. He moved to London in 2005 to study at the Royal College of Music on a full scholarship, and on graduation joined the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. Engagements since leaving the Programme include Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) for San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera, Escamillo for Opera North, in Beijing, Dresden and at the Salzburg Festival, Don Giovanni in Santiago and Toulouse, Leporello (Don Giovanni) at La Scala, Milan, and at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Leporello in Bordeaux, Tomsky (The Queen of Spades) in Israel and Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) and Eugene Onegin in Vilnius.

Smoriginas frequently appears in concert, engagements including Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner and at the Barbican under Valery Gergiev, and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem in Budapest.