BIOGRAPHY

A native of Detroit, Michigan, bass-baritone Andrew Hallam is committed to connecting with audiences through opera and song.

Last season, he debuted the roles of Le Roi in Massenet’s Cendrillon and Jimmy in Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel with the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) Opera, and returned to Kentucky Opera as Actor 8 in All is Calm. He also joined Cincinnati Opera as Escamillo for Singer and Spirits: Carmen Uncorked, an outreach production of Bizet’s Carmen. For the company’s 2026 Summer Season, he will study-cover the role of Escamillo and sing in the chorus of Carmen. He later appeared in the 2026 CCM Artist Diploma Showcase as Joseph De Rocher in Dead Man Walking, performing the Act II “push-up aria,” and as Dad in Jake Heggie’s one-act Cinderella 99.

For the 2024-25 season, Andrew opened with performances as Nardo in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera and Peter Quince in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with CCM Opera. He went on to join Kentucky Opera for the chorus of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion, and returned to Cincinnati Opera for its 2025 Summer Chorus, appearing in productions of Verdi’s Rigoletto, Puccini’s Tosca, Bock’s Fiddler on the Roof, and the company’s Opera Chorus Cabaret. Andrew also performed in Cincinnati Song Initiative’s Let It Be New digital concert, where he premiered three newly commissioned works by rising composers. He then concluded the season as Ibn-Hakia in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta with Queen City Opera.

In the 2023-24 season, he workshopped the role of Mr. Baron in Missy Mazzoli’s Lincoln in the Bardo with Cincinnati Opera’s Opera Fusion: New Works. Presented in Cincinnati on behalf of the Metropolitan Opera, the work will receive its premiere in fall 2026. He later appeared as Revírník (Forester) in CCM’s production of Leoš Janáček’s Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen), where critics described Andrew as “wonderfully resonant, with a hearty timbre” (Connor Annable, Cincinnati Classical Concert Reviews). He also joined Cincinnati Opera for its 2024 Summer Chorus, featuring Verdi’s La traviata and Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio.

During the 2022-23 season, he performed throughout the metro Detroit area with the Motor City Lyric Opera (MCLO) and as a chorister for Detroit Opera’s production of Aïda. Through MCLO’s Opera on Wheels initiative, Andrew engaged in outreach productions such as The Billy Goats Gruff, bringing free, educational, and interactive opera to children from diverse backgrounds across Michigan. In addition, he joined Opera in the Ozarks as an Emerging Artist, where he debuted the roles of Dr. Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Grandpa Moss in Copland’s The Tender Land. 

Other credits include Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with the Vienna Summer Music Festival, and Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with German dialogue, Primo Giudice in Alessandro Stradella’s La Susanna, the Doctor in William Grant Still’s Highway 1, U.S.A., and the Ripley Constable in Adolphus Hailstork’s Rise for Freedom: The John P. Parker Story with the University of Michigan Opera Theatre.

Andrew received a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music in Voice Performance from CCM, where he is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma. There, he received the 2025 Sam Adams Award and won the Seybold-Russell Award in the 2023 CCM Opera Scholarship Competition.