Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, who received his master’s degree at the Eastman School of Music in 2001, won two Grammy Awards February 8 for the Los Angeles Opera’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
The DVD recording of the production won in the categories of Best Opera Recording, which is presented to the conductor, album producer, and principal soloists, and Best Classical Album, which goes to the artists and album producer. In Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Griffey performed alongside Tony Award-winning Broadway stars Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald.
Griffey played the anti-hero Jimmy MacIntyre in the Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht opera. His performance earned kudos from such publications as the Los Angeles Times, which described him as “brilliant . . . the perfect Jimmy,” and the New York Times, which called him “an impressive young artist with an unusual tenor voice that boasts heroic heft and lyrical sweetness.”
This season, Griffey is Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw for the Portland Opera and has the title role of Peter Grimes for the San Diego Opera, a role which he performed with the Metropolitan Opera last season. Griffin is also in demand as a recitalist. He was named one of 12 exceptional singers of distinction by Musical America magazine in 2005. While at Eastman, Griffey was a pupil of John Maloy.
In the Best Opera Recording category, Griffey beat out two other Eastman nominees: Professor of Lute Paul O’Dette, who was a conductor on the album Lully: Psyche, and alumna Renée Fleming (MM ’83), who performed Tatiana on the DVD recording of the Metropolitan Opera production of Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky.
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