Dean Anthony
Dean Anthony draws inspiration and expertise from a comprehensive career spanning over 40 years and innumerable turns as performer, director, educator, producer and administrator. Most recently, Mr. Anthony was named as Producing Director of Knoxville Opera along with his position as Director of Opera, at the Janiec Opera Company of the Brevard Music Center.
Frequently engaged as a stage director, Mr. Anthony’s artistic process is hallmarked by an energetic, gritty, and physical style. His portfolio stretches across the repertoire from Le Nozze di Figaro to Dead Man Walking and includes regular engagements at regional houses across the United States. In 2020, he received the Charles Nelson Reilly American Prize Stage Director Award for his work on Tom Cipullo’s world premiere opera, Mayo. Mr. Anthony’s upcoming and projects include Into the Woods with Annapolis Opera, Gianni Schicchi & Cavalleria Rusticana with Opera Tampa, Le Nozze di Figaro with Omaha Opera & Opera Delaware, Sweeney Todd with Opera Tampa, Glory Denied & The Merry Widow with Knoxville Opera, and HMS Pinafore with Pensacola Opera.
A major producer and promoter of new opera works, Mr. Anthony has helped facilitate, create, and develop numerous projects including Glory Denied, Mayo, The Calling, Supper’s Ready, Falling Angel, Zoom “Stop” Bully, Sister Carrie, The Leesburg 15, Homeless, Fleecing the Flock, and Change the World, It Needs It!, a new cabaret with the Kurt Weill Foundation. In collaboration with composer Michael Ching, Mr. Anthony conceived and created the opera Speed Dating Tonight!, which garnered nationwide attention and has been booked for over 120 different productions to date. In 2020, he recreated, produced, and directed, Zoom Speed Dating Tonight!, an online version of the original production presented livestream and produced by multiple Opera Companies and Universities.
Mr. Anthony is currently in his 11th season as Director of Opera with the Janiec Opera Company of the Brevard Music Center. In his time at Brevard, he has produced and directed over 40 productions. Some of the highlights include, Street Scene, Falstaff, Threepenny Opera, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Candide, Madama Butterfly, Sweeney Todd, Turn of the Screw, The Ballad of Baby Doe, Into the Woods, and The Bernstein Mass with Keith Lockhart. A passionate educator, he has shared his insights through a unique movement and acting masterclass series at opera companies, universities, and music festivals the world over.
As a character tenor, Mr. Anthony performed over 100 roles on the operatic stage and garnered acclaim for his keen vocal, dramatic, physical, and acrobatic abilities, earning him the nickname “The Tumbling Tenor.” Some of his most praised portrayals include the roles of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Little Bat in Susannah, Bardolfo in Falstaff, Beppe in I Pagliacci, Alfred in Die Fledermaus, and Njegus in The Merry Widow. He has graced the stages of companies across the globe from Vancouver Opera to Theater des Westens in Berlin, while frequenting North American venues including L’Opera de Montreal, San Francisco Opera, and New York City Opera, among others. Although retired from the stage, comic acting and narration opportunities have drawn him back once in a while for Frosh in Die Fledermaus and Benoit in La Boheme, Spinelloccio in Gianni Schicchi and Ambrogio in Barber of Seville. Narration’s include Peter and the Wolf, Peer Gynt, Sonnet Number 128 by Kenji Bunch, When Instruments Roam the Earth, and Into the Woods.
Mr. Anthony is also esteemed for numerous television appearances from his celebrated turn as Daniel Buchanan in Francesca Zambello’s Street Scene, to the world premiere of Robert Greenleaf’s Under the Arbor and An Evening of Gilbert and Sullivan with The Boston Pops on PBS. He is featured in the Grammy-nominated recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, produced under the NAXOS label.