STANFORD OLSEN, Professor of Voice and Lucille P. and Elbert B. Shelfer Eminent Scholar, is one of the world's leading light lyric tenors. Since his debut in 1986 opposite Joan Sutherland, he has performed over 150 times with New York's Metropolitan Opera, and has been heard in such major venues as La Scala, Australian Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, San Francisco Opera, and most other significant opera companies in the U.S. and Europe.

One of this generation's most versatile concert performers, he regularly performs with the world's top orchestras and conductors in repertory from Bach to Bartok. A frequent collaborator with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Olsen has performed with such notables as Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Seiji Ozawa, the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra, James Levine and the Berlin Philharmonic, John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque soloists, and Helmuth Rilling and the International BachAkademie. He has performed at the festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood and Salzburg, and is a regular guest with the orchestras of Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, St. Louis, Montreal, and Atlanta. Winner of the 1989 Walter W. Naumburg Award for recitalists, he debuted in Alice Tully Hall in 1989 singing Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin, a piece he repeated in 1997 in the 92nd St. Y's final "Schubertiade" recitals, stepping in for an ailing Hermann Prey with James Levine accompanying. He continues to be a sought after recitalist in the U.S. and Europe.

Mr. Olsen received the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Utah and the Artists Diploma in Opera from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, who named him Alumnus of the Year in 1992. A long-time coach for members of the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist Development Program, he has taught young singers in masterclasses at Santa Fe Opera, St. Louis Opera Theatre, The Eastman School, Tanglewood, New England Conservatory, and The Manhattan School of Music.

Olsen's recordings of Bach, Mozart and Rossini have received critical praise, including a 1995 nomination for a Grammy Award for Rossini's Tancredi with Alberto Zedda on the Naxos label. His 1999 Telarc recording of Dvorak's Stabat Mater, with the Atlanta Symphony under the baton of Robert Shaw, also received a Grammy nomination.