Tenor STANFORD OLSEN, who made his Metropolitan Opera debut on an hour's notice as Arturo in I Puritani opposite the legendary soprano Dame Joan Sutherland, has fulfilled his initial promise as one of the world's outstanding artists. His 2001/2002 season included performances of Belmonte from Die Entführung aus dem Serail with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Carmina Burana, both with the NHK in Tokyo and with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Berlioz Requiem with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa - at Boston's Symphony Hall and then at Carnegie Hall - and Dvorák's Stabat mater with the San Francisco Symphony.

Olsen's operatic experience includes appearances as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore; the title role of Le comte Ory; Tonio in La fille du régiment; Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni; Ferrando in Così fan tutte; Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia; Idreno in Semiramide (which, with James Conlon and the Metropolitan Opera, was taped for television and subsequently released on LaserDisc); Fenton in Falstaff; Alfred in Die Fledermaus; Lindoro in L'italiana in Algeri; and the Italian Singer in Der Rosenkavalier.

In addition to regular performances with the Metropolitan Opera, Olsen has performed with La Scala, Netherlands Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Théâtre du Châtelet, Australian Opera, Brussels' La Monnaie, Madrid's Teatro la Zarzuela, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia, among others.

Stanford Olsen's European concert début took place in 1989, in the Berlioz Requiem with James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Olsen has also appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the Internationale Bach-akademie Stuttgart, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, l'Orchestre National de France/Radio France, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Orchestra della RAI, as well as with Boston's prestigious Handel and Haydn Society.

Olsen has performed at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, Tangle-wood, the Ravinia Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

His winning of the 1989 Walter W. Naumburg Award led to his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1990, for which he sang Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin. In the final year of the Schubertiade at New York's 92nd Street Y, he again sang Schubert's great song cycle, accompanied by James Levine.

His performance of Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail conducted by John Eliot Gardiner was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and has been released on video. He has recorded the role of Argirio in Rossini's Tancredi with Alberto Zedda on Naxos, Carmina Burana (for London/Decca) with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony and more recently with Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony (for Telarc), Bach's St. Matthew Passion, conducted by Seiji Ozawa, and Dvorák's Stabat mater with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony (Telarc).

In addition to the Naumburg award, Stanford Olsen was the winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1986, and has received awards from the Richard Tucker Foundation and the Eleanor Steber Foundation.