Fletcher Artist Management is Freddie Ballentine's General Management. For inquiries in Europe, please also contact IMG Artists.
Hailing from Norfolk, Virginia, Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine was the 2021 recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Marian Anderson Award, and is an alumnus of both the Cafritz Young Artists of Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program.
Freddie’s 2025-2026 season includes his Bayerische Staatsoper debut as the Third Jew in Salome, which he will also record with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería. He returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Sportin’ Life in Porgy & Bess, makes his role debut as Max in Le Freischütz with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and makes his Rurhtriennale and Tiroler Festspiele Erl debuts, reprising Venables/Huffman’s We Are The Lucky Ones. He continues his collaboration with pianist Kunal Lahiry, presenting their program Our People:A Celebration of Black and LGBTQ Voices Through Song and Vogue at New York City’s 92nd St Y. The pair has recently performed Our People at St. George’s Bristol, Konzerthaus Berlin, Theatre de l’Athenee in Paris and The Kennedy Center.
Admired for his versatility and individuality, Freddie’s 2024-2025 season included debuts with the New World Symphony (Harlekin in Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Stéphane Denève conducting), Austin Opera (Ben Marco in The Manchurian Candidate), Utah Opera (The Witch in Hänsel und Gretel), and Detroit Opera (Kevin Richardson in The Central Park Five). He returned to Dutch National Opera for the world premiere of We Are The Lucky Ones; joined the Real Orquesta Sinfónia de Sevilla for Beethoven’s 9th Symphony; gave a recital with Kunal Lahiry for Seattle Opera; appeared in concert with Pacific Vocal Series, and bowed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin as Melot in Tristan und Isolde.
Freddie began the 2023-2024 season in a return to Seattle Opera, singing Loge in his first German-language performances of Das Rheingold. He then created the role of Trainer in the highly-anticipated world premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded at Washington National Opera. Two notable engagements at The Metropolitan Opera followed: Remendado in Carrie Cracknell’s new production of Bizet’s Carmen, and Tybalt in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, conducted by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Elsewhere during the season, he joined the Rotterdam Philharmonic for a theatrical concert, “Different from Others” with conductor Manoj Kamps.
Recent operatic engagements include Sam in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; Jack O’Brien & Toby Higgins in Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny with Opera Vlaanderen; the Drum Major in Wozzeck with Staatstheater Kassel; George Bailey in Heggie/Scheer’s It’s a Wonderful Life, Loge in Wagner’s The Rhinegold, and Nick in The Handmaid’s Tale at English National Opera; Judah in the world premiere of Castor and Patience with Cincinnati Opera; Sportin’ Life in Porgy and Bess for his debuts with The Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, and Dutch National Opera; Don José in Carmen and Charlie Parker in Yardbird with Seattle Opera; the Steersman in Der fliegende Höllander with Cincinnati Opera; Reverend Parris in Robert Ward’s The Crucible at the Glimmerglass Festival, and returns to Los Angeles Opera to sing Monastatos in Barrie Kosky/1927’s production of Die Zauberflöte and Amon in Akhnaten.
In concert, Mr. Ballentine has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Arvo Pärt’s Miserere, the New Jersey Symphony for Handel’s Messiah, as a featured soloist with the New York Choral Society for their Christmas Concert, with the Bard Music Festival, for selections from Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago, and with Naples Philharmonic and the Colburn School for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Freddie Ballentine trained with the Wolf Trap Opera, Aspen Music Opera Center and The Opera Theatre of St. Louis, who awarded him the Thelma Steward Endowed Artist Alumni Award.
