About James

Critically acclaimed by classical music outlets across the United States, American bass James Harrington continues to gain recognition for his relentless artistic devotion to character acting. Praised by Broadway World as “a compelling actor with a rich and powerful bass voice,” he prides himself on an unconventional road to his current opera career, drawing from past lives as a jazz and pop singer. 

Originally trained in jazz at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, James began his career performing in intimate spaces instead of grand halls—a setting in which he would refine the subtle communicative approach that now serves him in opera. He would transition from jazz into a successful career singing professional a cappella for four years, winning the Boston Harmony Sweepstakes and competing nationally as a member of Groove, and was a founding member of Mutual X, which was the alternate for Season 1 of NBC’s The Sing Off.

Though Harrington is a self-described “child of jazz”, he would find his singular calling within opera, wherein he could combine nuance with the vivid spectacle of operatic storytelling.

At heart, I’m still a jazz guy living in the person and career of an operatic bass. I used to think of it as a constant struggle to reconcile those two parts of me—by which I meant make the low-brow thing go away and be an opera singer. Now I consider it a constant struggle to reconcile those two parts of me—by which I mean to honor the entirety of who I am as an artist and musician, and how I got here. Because I’ve always been trying to tell people’s stories—now I just tell them more loudly.

Despite coming to opera later in life, he has made up for lost time by performing roles with over a dozen companies across the United States: Harrington’s performing credits include the Santa Fe Opera, Portland Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Idaho, and St. Petersburg (FL) Opera. His résumé includes a bevy of the bass repertoire’s most compelling roles, including Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hagen in excerpts from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte. 

Harrington’s personal artistic projects aim to push classical music and opera beyond standard recital formats, using multi-sensory experiences and unexpected interpretations. A doctoral candidate at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, his final recital will encapsulate this vision, re-imagining Die Winterreise using a combination of original film, adaptive projection, and sound design.

In the same way that he sees a need for innovation within the live performance experience, Harrington sees an equal need for performing artist training programs to update their curricula to better equip artists for the modern world. He codifies many of his ideas in his debut book, Building a Career from School to Stage: Operapreneurship (Routledge, 2020), wherein he provides blueprints for others—including those with nontraditional musical training—to also find their way to opera.

James Harrington holds degrees from Florida State University (M.M. Voice) and Berklee College of Music (B.M. Music Business & Management) and is the recipient of the Paul J. Collins Wisconsin Distinguished Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Bass James Harrington imbued grave dignity to Sarastro, tolling his grand aria ‘In diesen heil’gen Hallen’ (‘Within these sacred halls’) like the cathedral bells of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s.” [Houston Press]

“But the standout was James Harrington as Don Alfonso. I feel that he is a major talent in our midst.” [The Well-Tempered Ear]

“Harrington was superb in La Calunnia (Gossip), from Rossini’s Barber of Seville. His character is a confident rogue, and up close we could see a range of emotions play across his face faster than clouds in a Hawaii sky, from sly to blustering to confiding, describing how gossip is a great strategy for taking a big man down. And this before Twitter!” [Big Island Music]