Cultural Leadership Breakfast: Ryan Brown

Founded in 1995 as Les Violons de Lafayette, Opera Lafayette presented its inaugural season in the Salon Doré, the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s 18th-century Parisian drawing room. The only opera company with a full season in both Washington, D.C., and New York City, Opera Lafayette performed in France at the Royal Opera of Versailles in 2012 and 2014. Under Ryan Brown’s leadership, the company has issued more than a dozen recordings and three DVDs on the Naxos label.

In addition to works by such widely known composers as Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart and Haydn, Brown has programmed and conducted the Washington premieres of important operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) and Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787). In 2012, he was awarded La Médaille d’Or du Rayonnement Culturel from La Renaissance Française USA for raising awareness of the French language and francophone cultures.

The holder of degrees from Oberlin College, the University of Cincinnati and the Juilliard School, where he was a violin student of Dorothy DeLay, Brown also studied conducting at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory. At the Oct. 24 breakfast, he will look back at Opera Lafayette’s growth and give insight into the current 30th anniversary season, at the end of which, in June of 2025, he will conclude his tenure.

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