Mexican tenor Javier Camarena is the preeminent bel canto specialist of his generation. Praised for his burnished tone, gleaming high notes, flawless coloratura and veracious portrayals, he regularly appears in leading roles alongside today’s foremost stars at the world’s top opera houses.
Mexican tenor Javier Camarena is the preeminent bel canto specialist of his generation. Praised for his burnished tone, gleaming high notes, flawless coloratura and veracious portrayals, he regularly appears in leading roles alongside today’s foremost stars at the world’s top opera houses.
Javier Camarena begins his 2024/25 season with the house debuts at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto conducted by Music Director Enrique Mazzola and staged by Mary Birnbaum and later at the Dallas Opera as Alfredo in La Traviata staged by Louisa Muller. Javier’s interpretation of Alfredo can also be heard at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in David McVicar’s production of Verdi’s tragedy. This season the tenor returns to Bergamo to sing Ernesto in Don Pasquale under the baton of Iván López Reynoso staged by Amélie Niermeyer. Camarena’s operatic season concludes at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples where he portrays Romeo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. The tenor also performs solo concerts among others in Tokyo and Taiwan and sings at the Abu Dhabi festival. Later that season he gives a solo recital in Santander and returns to Pamplona for a concert with the Orquesta sinfónica de Navarra and maestro Perry So.
In the 2023/24 season Camarena sang Elvino in La sonnambula at the Vienna Staatsoper, staged by Marco Arturo Marelli and conducted by Giacomo Sagripanti. He appeared at the Staatsoper Munich in his signature role of Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, alongside soprano Pretty Yende as Adina, and joins Opera de Monte Carlo as Tonio in Jean-Louis Grinda’s new production of La fille du régiment conducted by Ion Marin. In that season, Camarena thrice returned to Spain: for Miguel del Arco’s new production of Rigoletto (Duke) led by Nicola Luisotti at Teatro Real de Madrid, as Romeo in Roméo et Juliette opposite Nadine Sierra at the Palacio Euskalduna in Bilbao, and Barcelona’s Liceu welcomed him once more for his performances of Ramiro in La cenerentola.
In addition to his operatic engagements, Camarena embarked on a concert tour of South America with performances in Chile and Uruguay. He also brought his captivating recitals to Europe: in Barcelona’s Palau, Girona’s Auditori Palau de Congressos, Zurich’s Opernhaus, Valencia’s Palau de les Arts, Zaragoza’s Auditorio-Palacio de Congresos de Zaragoza, and Oviedo’s Auditorio Príncipe Felipe, where he stared in an orchestral Gala concert. He saw additional Gala performances at Teatro de La Maestranza in Sevilla and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and toured Japan under the auspices of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he appeared as the Duke in Rigoletto with Nadine Sierra as Gilda.
In recent seasons, Camarena showed his great versatility in opera roles and as a concert performer. He sang one of his signature roles as Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Metropolitan Opera, at the Gaetano Donizetti Theatre (Bergamo), at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He returned to the Metropolitan Opera, to the Opéra national de Paris and to the Deutsche Oper in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (Edgardo di Ravenswood), sang at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona the role of Tamino in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and in Massenet’s Manon. His performances continued to dazzle audiences as he debuted as Alfredo in La traviata at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. At the Paris Opera, after his great success as Ernesto in Don Pasquale, he sang Arturo in I Puritani and starred in highly appraised performances of La fille du régiment. He made his longed-for debut at the Teatro Real Madrid as Gualtiero in Bellini’s Il pirata in one of the most difficult tenor roles ever. He returned to the Zurich Opera House as Don Ramiro in La cenerentola, before also performing this role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. As part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series, he joined Angel Blue, Pretty Yende and Matthew Polenzani for the New Year’s Eve Gala, live from the Parktheater at the Kurhaus Göggingen (Germany). Together with Plácido Domingo he sang a gala concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and travelled to Spain for a gala concert at the 35th Festival Castell de Peralada and gave a concert in homage to the great Enrico Caruso’s centenary of death at the Sala Cecilia in Rome. Further concert engagements brought the tenor to the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Oviedo, Murcia, San Sebastian, to the Auditorio Principe in Oviedo, the Palau in Valencia, the Harris Theater in Chicago and to the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid.
It was at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City that Camarena made his professional debut, as Tonio in a 2004 staging of La fille du régiment, and he has since returned to the house for three further productions. In 2007, he joined the ensemble of the Zurich Opera. Four years later, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, which is one of the signature roles for which he is best known. Others include the same composer’s La cenerentola (Don Ramiro) and Le comte Ory; Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Belmonte) and Così fan tutte (Ferrando); Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (Nemorino) and Lucia di Lammermoor (Arturo); Verdi’s Falstaff (Fenton); and Bellini’s La sonnambula (Elvino). Equally celebrated for appearances at San Francisco Opera, Paris Opera, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, Dresden’s Semperoper and the Vienna and Bavarian State Operas, the tenor has collaborated with such eminent conductors as the late Claudio Abbado, Marco Armiliato, Maurizio Benini, Bruno Campanella, Giuseppe Finzi, Daniele Gatti, Fabio Luisi, Zubin Mehta, Evelino Pidò and Franz Welser-Möst.
Camarena’s discography includes three solo titles for Sony: Recitales (2014), Serenata (2015), and a Latin pop album titled Javier Camarena Canta a Cri Cri (2016). In August 2018 Decca released his highly anticipated and acclaimed Album Contrabandista. He also appears on numerous operatic DVD/Blu-ray releases (e.g. at the Zurich Opera with Mozart’s Così fan tutte in 2010, Verdi’s Falstaff in 2012 and with Cecilia Bartoli in Rossini’s Le comte Ory in 2014).
Born in Xalapa in Mexico’s State of Veracruz, Javier Camarena studied with mezzo-soprano Cecilia Perfecto at the Universidad Veracruzana before completing his musical studies with honors under Hugo Barreiro and Maria Eugenia Sutti at the University of Guanajuato. In 2004, he took first prize in Mexico’s Carlo Morelli National Singing Competition, and the following year he won the Juan Oncinas Award at Barcelona’s Francisco Viñas Competition, after which he was invited to join Zurich’s International Opera Studio under the mentorship of fellow tenor Francisco Araiza. In 2021, Javier Camarena was awarded with the International Opera Awards as „Male Singer of the Year“.
