Originally from Pennsylvania, bass-baritone Ben Strong was a 2025 National Semifinalist in the Met’s Laffont Competition and is now in his first year in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He will make his Met debut during the 2025–26 season as the Major Domo in Andrea Chénier then cover the Commissioner in Madama Butterfly. During the 2024–25 season, he made his company debut at Des Moines Metro Opera as Harašta in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and covered the title role of Der Fliegende Holländer. He will end his season by making his Lincoln Center debut in a concert performance of Mozart’s Zaide with the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center under the baton of Dame Jane Glover. While a resident artist with Palm Beach Opera, he made his company debut as Marchese d’Obigny in La Traviata, appeared as Pâris in Roméo et Juliette, and covered several roles including Count Capulet and the Duke in Roméo et Juliette, and Bartolo and Antonio in Le Nozze di Figaro. On the concert stage, he has appeared as the bass soloist in the Rachmaninoff 150th Anniversary Concert at Carnegie Hall, Dvořák’s Te Deum at the Rudolfinum in Prague, and Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass with the Indiana University Chorale, among others. He received second place in the 2025 Vero Beach Opera Rising Stars Competition and was nominated for the Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation later that year. In 2024, he was a finalist and received the Encouragement Award in the George and Nora London Foundation Competition, was named a semi-finalist in Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition, and received an Encouragement Award from Pittsburgh Festival Opera’s Mildred Miller Competition. He is an alumnus of the Des Moines Metro Opera Apprentice Artist Program, the Palm Beach Opera Bailey Apprentice Artist Program, and holds degrees in voice from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.