The Metropolitan Opera has named bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green the winner of the 2023 Beverly Sills Artist Award—the second time Green has received this honor. The annual $50,000 award recognizes extraordinarily gifted singers with rising Met careers. Established in 2006 by an endowment gift from the late Agnes Varis, a former Met board member, the award is given in honor of the legendary American soprano Beverly Sills.

Most recently at the Met, Green made his first major role debut playing young Emile Griffith in Terence Blanchard’s Champion. The Financial Times praised Green describing his performance as “always impeccable and he brings a naturalness to every role.” A graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Green, has been a fixture on the company’s stage since his 2012 debut as the Mandarin in Turandot. He helped open the 2021–22 season as Uncle Paul in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones—which won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording at the most recent Grammy ceremony; reprised his portrayals of Jake in Porgy and Bess and Colline in La Bohème, made his role debuts as Varlaam in Boris Godunov and Truffaldin in Ariadne auf Naxos, and performed in A Concert for Ukraine as a soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

“I remain profoundly honored to be the recipient of the Beverly Sills Award, for the second time,” Green said. “Ms. Sills’s infectious vitality and legacy of arts advocacy continues to radiate through the hallowed halls of the Met and beyond and I look forward to standing in the glow of that heritage.”  

Other Met highlights include the King in Aida, Oroe in Semiramide, Rambo in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, the Bonze in Madama Butterfly, the Jailer in Tosca, and the Second Knight in Parsifal.  In 2014, he became a member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera, where his roles included Banquo in Macbeth, Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, Don Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Truffaldin, Fasolt in Das Rheingold, and Colline, among many others. This season, he also appeared in concert with the Met Orchestra and Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall and as Ferrando in Il Trovatore and Orest in Elektra at the Washington National Opera,Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde at the Paris Opera and in concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Varlaam at the Bavarian State Opera.

            The Sills Award was created to help further the careers of rising stars by providing additional funding for vocal coaching, language study, travel costs, and other professional expenses. Sills, who died in 2007, was well known as a supporter and friend to developing young artists, and this award continues her legacy as an advocate for important emerging singers.