About
Photo Credit: Morgan Horell
“Roth’s voice soared with each note, highlighting his range”
Biography
Of his performance in the role of Male Chorus in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Academy of Vocal Arts, Parterre Box wrote, “An exceptionally promising young tenor, Shawn Roth has a lustrous spinto voice that easily traversed the jagged intervals with precision, and declaimed the text clearly and with dramatic bite.” Winner of the Wagner Society of New York’s Singer Awards, the Marilyn Horne Song Competition, and several Laffont Competition districts, Roth has also distinguished himself internationally in the final rounds of Neue Stimmen, the Meistersinger Competition, and the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition. In the 2026-2027 season, Roth will join the Bayerische Staatsoper Opera Studio in Munich.
Through his undergraduate studies at Oberlin Conservatory, Roth enjoyed an early professional relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra. He sang the role of Der Lakai in a celebrated production of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in January 2019, and he returned to Severance Hall in February as a soloist in the Cleveland Orchestra’s Family Concert, The Mozart Experience.
In 2024, Roth joined the Butler Studio at Houston Grand Opera. There, he performed various mainstage roles, including Heinrich der Schreiber in Tannhäuser, and Curley in Of Mice and Men, the first studio-only opera at HGO in over twenty years. He had also covered Tony in West Side Story, and Kronprinz in Silent Night. In the Butler Studio Showcase, Roth performed scenes from Faust, Carmen, Fidelio, and Die Tote Stadt, and was featured in the Rienzi Recital Series.
Roth has enjoyed two seasons at Des Moines Metro Opera, where in addition to his performances of Der dritte Jude in Salome and Pásek in The Cunning Little Vixen, he has covered Narraboth (Salome) and Erik (Der Fliegende Holländer). In several concerts, he performed excerpts of Siegmund, Walther von Stolzing, and Peter Grimes.
In the 2026-2027 season at Bayerische Staatsoper, Roth looks forward to singing First Armored Man in Die Zauberflöte, High Priest in Idomeneo, and Third Squire in Parsifal, among various other mainstage roles. He is a proud recipient of Opera Foundation’s stipendium in Munich.
Roth is represented internationally by Askonas Holt.