John Mburu

John Mburu is a Kenyan-American Bass born in Warwick, Rhode Island. He has been praised for his, “notable” and “steadfast” portrayal of the Duke of Verona from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in the 2023 Glimmerglass Festival. Mburu has performed a variety of genres around the U.S. including opera, oratorio, musical theatre, cantata, concert works, and jazz. Mburu holds a Master of Music degree from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music where he studied under Kenneth Shaw and received a Bachelor of Music degree from Lee University, where he studied voice under Tony Deaton. Roles that Mburu has enjoyed portraying are Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro, Pope Urban VIII in Galileo Galilei, Pallante in Agrippina, Friar Laurent in Roméo et Juliette, Colline in La Bohéme, Parson in The Cunning Little Vixen, and Collatinus in The Rape of Lucretia. Mburu will be joining Opera Theatre of St. Louis as a Gerdine Young Artist where he will sing the role of Curio in Handel’s Julius Ceasar. Mburu joins Minnesota Opera as a 2024-2025 Resident Artist.