The Dallas Opera’s(TDO) and CEO Ian Derrer have announced that the recipient of The Dallas Opera’s “Maria Callas Debut Artist of the Year” award is Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis.

The company awarded the prize to the Canadian baritone for his 2025-2026 season debut as Rodrigo in Verdi’s “Don Carlo.”

The award is elected exclusively by TDO subscribers and is given to one performer each season in recognition of a particularly memorable and outstanding company debut. Subscribers selected Dupuis as the standout in a competitive list of 21 debut artists this season.

In a statement Dupuis said, “I have always believed that the characters, the story, should come first. We should strive to achieve a certain communication of our emotional and psychological arcs, despite the sometimes ridiculously hard vocal requirements and, perhaps, even the quite challenging modern interpretations of these timeless masterpieces. To receive such a prize for a role I have honed for the last 10 years brings me such a deep and powerfully emotional sense of accomplishment. I hope you felt even a tiny fraction of the joy I experienced performing for you all. I am humbled, thank you!”

Past winners include Sylvia D’Eramo, Long Long, Kangmin Justin Kim, Joyce El-Khoury, Joyce DiDonato, Isabel Leonard, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Ben Heppner, and Cecilia Bartoli, among others.

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