Peixin Chen   bass

Peixin Chen is recognized for his majestically resonant bass voice and keen dramatic instinct that he brings to a wide range of roles on the international opera stage. His repertoire spans from the comic characters of Donizetti, Mozart, and Rossini to the strong and serious roles of Puccini, Verdi, and Wagner. Peixin Chen has worked with an illustrious array of conductors and directors including Harry Bicket, James Conlon, Eun Sun Kim, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Lorin Maazel, Enrique Mazzola, Zubin Mehta, Giancarlo del Monaco, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Michel Plasson, David Pountney, James Robinson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Peter Sellars, Patrick Summers, Krzysztof Urbański, and Francesca Zambello.

A highlight of the 2025-26 season is the the San Francisco Opera world premiere of The Monkey King, based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, by the creative team of Huang Ruo, David Henry Hwang, Diane Paulus, and Basil Twist. The role of Sparafucile in Verdi’s masterpiece Rigoletto has become a recurrent in the bass’ busy calendar and this season he bows in performances at San Francisco Opera led by Eun-Sun Kim and at the Canadian Opera Company under the baton of Johannes Debus. A frequent guest artist at the Metropolitan Opera, Peixin Chen returns to the company this season as Timur in the resplendent Franco Zeffirelli production of Turandot led by Oksana Lyniv; he also performs the role at The Atlanta Opera conducted by Iván López-Reynoso. On the concert stage Peixin Chen joins James Gaffigan and the San Francisco Symphony for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and makes a debut at the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra with performances of the Verdi Requiem conducted by Jun Märkl.

The bass made his debut at the Salzburger Festspiele in summer 2025 playing the principal role of The General in a new production by Peter Sellars of Prokofiev’s The Gambler conducted by Timur Zangiev and highlights of the recent past also include a debut at the Teatro Real in Rigoletto conducted by Nicola Luisotti, a debut at the Festival d’Aix en Provence in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in a new production by Ivo van Hove, a Lyric Opera of Chicago debut in Sir David McVicar new production premiere of the French, five act version of Verdi's Don Carlos, and a debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a fully-staged presentation of Das Rheingold under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel

PEIXIN CHEN, Bass Biography