Jay Hunter Morris is a Texas-born operatic tenor.

Morris was raised in Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas is a city located northeast of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex in Lamar County, Texas, in the United States. It is situated in Northeast Texas at the western edge of the Piney Woods. Physiographically, these regions are part of the West Gulf Coastal Plain. In 1900, 9,358 people lived...

, and attended Paris Junior College

Paris Junior College

Paris Junior College, or PJC, was founded in 1924 as a campus of Paris Independent School District in the U.S. state of Texas and currently counts three campuses: Paris, Greenville, and Sulphur Springs with a total enrollment of 4,000 students...

. He also attended Baylor University, Southern Methodist University and Julliard School of Music.

In November 1995, he performed the role of Anthony Candolino in the original production of Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...

's Master Class

Master Class

Master Class is a play by Terrence McNally, with incidental music by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Vincenzo Bellini.The play originally was staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Mark Taper Forum. After twelve previews, the Broadway production, directed by Leonard Foglia, opened...

.

He made his Seattle Opera

Seattle Opera

The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...

 debut in 1999 in Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

's Vanessa

Vanessa (opera)

Vanessa is an opera in three acts by Samuel Barber with an original English libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. It was composed in 1956–1957 and was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 15, 1958 under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos in a production designed by...

. He made his San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...

 debut in the role of Mitch in the world premiere of André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire (opera)

A Streetcar Named Desire is an opera composed by André Previn with a libretto by Philip Littell in 1995. It is based on the play by Tennessee Williams and received its premiere at the San Francisco Opera during the 1998-99 season.-Cast:...

.

On October 17, 2011, Morris sang the title role in the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

's new production of Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's Siegfried

Siegfried (opera)

Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...

, and his performance in that role was broadcast worldwide on November 5, 2011.

External links

• "Jay Hunter Morris, biography" from "IMG Artists"
• "Out of the Spotlight, Until the Met Needed a Tenor" from The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...