Bass-baritone Erik Van Heyningen is a member of the 2017-2018 Michigan Opera Theatre Studio Artist program. There, he will perform Angelotti and the Jailer in Tosca, Count Ceprano in Rigoletto, Ernest Hemingway et. al in Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27, and will cover Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro. In early 2018, he made his Austin Opera debut as Truffaldino in Ariadne auf Naxos. In the summer of 2018, Erik will return to Santa Fe Opera as an Apprentice Artist to perform The Imperial Commissioner in Madame Butterfly, Ragotzki/Archbishop in Candide, and to cover Haly in L’italiana in Algeri, Voltaire/Pangloss/Cacambo in Candide, and Robert J. Oppenheimer in Dr. Atomic. In the Fall of 2018 he will begin the Artist Diploma in Opera Studies at the Juilliard School. In the Summer of 2017, he joined the Santa Fe Opera for his first season as an Apprentice Artist. In the Spring of 2016, Mr. Van Heyningen was a Richard Gaddes Festival Artist with Opera Theater of St. Louis, where he appeared as Truffaldino while covering Colline in La Bohème and the Doctor in Macbeth. In May 2016, he covered the role of Ernesto in Donizetti’s Parisina d’Este with the Opera Orchestra of New York at Jazz at Lincoln Center under Eve Queler. In addition to his operatic work, Mr. Van Heyningen has been heard as a soloist in Haydn’s “Great Organ Mass,” J.S. Bach’s Cantatas 78 and 140, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass, Mozart’s Vesperae solenne de confessore, K339, and Regina Coeli in C, K276, Clérambault’s L’Amour et Bacchus, Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols, Fauré’s Requiem, Brahms’s Neue Liebeslieder, Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël, and Schubert’s Mass in G. An advocate of song repertoire, he has presented song repertoire in San Diego, Boston, Toronto, and St. Louis. Erik Van Heyningen was the recipient of First Prize in the 2016 Gerda Lissner Song and Lieder Competition. Also in 2016, he received an encouragement award from the Metropolitan Opera National Council at the New England regional division.