Biography
Mary Jane Johnson is a regular guest of the world's most important opera
houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Paris
Opéra Bastille, Teatro alla Scala, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro
Colon in Buenos Aires, the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, the San Francisco,
Netherlands, Washington, Pittsburgh and Montreal Operas as well as the Lyric
Opera of Chicago and the Houston Grand Opera, and the Vancouver Opera. Roles
for which she has earned acclaim include Emilia Marty in Janacek's The
Makropoulos Case, Lady Macbeth in Verdi's Macbeth, Katarina Ismailova
in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the title roles in Strauss'
Salome and Elektra, title roles in Turandot and Tosca,
and Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, the last of which she has performed
at the Teatro Comunale, the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, on tour in
Japan with La Scala and with the Santa Fe Opera Festival
Mary Jane Johnson first achieved international recognition in 1986 as the
first winner of the annual "Pavarotti Competition" which led to televised
performances with the great tenor in Puccini's La Bohème with the Opera
Company of Philadelphia.
Notable recent engagements include performances her first Brünnhilde in Wagner's
Die Walküre with the Deutsche Opera am Rhein to critical acclaim, Turandot
and La Fanciulla del West for the Arizona Opera; Emilia Marty in The
Makropoulos Case in Prague; Minnie in La Fanciulla del West in
Palm Beach, title role in Strauss' Elektra with the New Israeli Opera
and the Santa Fe Opera, Schönberg's one-woman expressionist opera, Erwartung
and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer for Vancouver Opera, La Fanciulla
del West in Arizona.
Notable upcoming engagements include debuts with The Atlanta Opera as Senta
and The Dallas Opera as the Witch in Hansel und Gretel for Dallas Opera.
On the concert stage, Ms. Johnson has appeared as Leonore in Fidelio
with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Lorin Maazel, both in Pittsburgh and at
Carnegie Hall, and Freia in Das Rheingold with the Chicago Symphony
orchestra under the baton of Sir George Solti. Other distinguished orchestral
appearances include concerts in Naples with the RAI Orchestra and in San Francisco
with the San Francisco Symphony, and Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in St. Pölten,
Austria, Honolulu Symphony, and with the Amarillo Symphony in Texas.
A charismatic personality, Ms. Johnson has appeared in the nationally televised
Pavarotti Plus Gala, Live from Lincoln Center and was featured on CBS Sunday
Morning. She resides in Amarillo, Texas with her husband and two children.
