American bass baritone Damon Nestor Ploumis delights audiences throughout Europe with his vocal and theatrical characterizations throughout the operatic repertoire, specializing in the bel canto works of Rossini and Donnizetti.

The past two seasons have brought Mr. Ploumis to the stages of the Swedish Royal Opera in Stockholm as Dr. Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Landesbühnen Sachsen in Dresden as Don Pasquale, the Theater Bremen as Don Magnifico in La Centerentola, the Landestheater Salzburg as Bartolo, and Deutsches National Theater in Weimar as Don Pasquale and Gonzio in Antonio Caldara’s Den Menschenfeind, Theater Hof as Don Pasquale, and the Alden Beisen Festival in Belgium for twenty-four consecutive performances as Bartolo.

A frequent guest of the Finnish National Opera, Mr. Ploumis has been heard in Helsinki as Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola under the baton of Alfredo Zedda, Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore , Don Profundo in Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo’s production of Il viaggo a Reims, Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Mephistopheles in La Damnation de Faust.  Other European credits include Dulcamara in the Jonathan Miller production of L’elisir d’amore in Stockholm, Dulcamara at the Zurich Opera, his debut at the Greek National Opera in Athens as Bartolo, the title role of Telemann’s Pimpinone at the Zurich Summer Festival, Don Geronio in Il Turco in Italia in Lübeck, Don Alfonso in Così van tutte for the National Opera of Cyprus, and a variety of guest appearances in Bielefeld, Giessen, Münster, Flensburg, Radebeul, Rostock, Innsbruck, Graz, Heidelberg, Oldenburg, and London.

As a member of the German National Theater of Weimar, Mr. Ploumis performed the title role in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Colline in La bohème, the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo, and Giacinto in Galuppi’s, Il Mondo alla roversa. Other repertoire and venues have included Falstaff in Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Varlaam in Boris Godunov, and Gessler in William Tell in Schleswig-Holstein.  On the lighter side he has been Sam in Trouble in Tahiti in Geneva and Booh Pah in The Mikado at the Okanagan Arts Festival in British Columbia.

Damon Nestor Ploumis was educated at Eton College, the University of Cambridge (History), Athens University, the Ecole Biblique Française in Jerusalem (Theology), and the University of East Anglia (Law). Having received a scholarship from the European Community to study under baritone Costas Pascalis in Athens, he completed his formal vocal studies in the United States, graduating from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied with Louis Quilico,.  Mr. Ploumis was a member of in the Merola Program of the San Francisco Opera.
 
In addition to his busy singing schedule, Damon Nestor Ploumis is in his fourth season as director of the Lyric Opera Studio Weimar a summer young artists program which has attracted young singers from 24 countries to study and perform fully staged opera productions under the tutelage of an international faculty.