Bass-baritone Dean Elzinga has appeared in featured roles at the Metropolitan Opera and Los Angeles Opera and has taken leading roles with New York City Opera, Glimmerglass, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, and other opera companies across the USA, Canada, and in Europe. In Seattle, Memphis, and Des Moines, he played the demonic Four Villains in Tales of Hoffmann. He was devil Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's Rake's Progress (Edmonton, Des Moines), and most recently appeared as the evil, petty, dictator Don Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio (Edmonton). At the Vienna Volksoper he sang Mozart's Figaro and Leporello as well as Méphistophélès in Gounod’s Faust. He has garnered praise in a wide repertoire from Bach to Wagner.

Mr Elzinga is a champion of new music. He has earned international notice in Peter Maxwell Davies' challenging Eight Songs for a Mad King (New York City, Cleveland, East Hampton, and Santa Monica). He performed the central role in Schoenberg's Die glückliche Hand at Bard Festival, and starred in Elliott Carter's What Next? at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and RAI Torino (also commercially available on ECM Records).

Mr. Elzinga has taken principal solo bows in some of the world’s great concert halls, such as Avery Fisher and Alice Tully in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, RAI Torino in Italy, Disney Hall, and the Hollywood Bowl. He is one of the country's sought-after Beethoven Ninth basses, having performed it with Minnesota Orchestra and dozens of other symphony orchestras. Other principal concert appearances include the Verdi Requiem (Santa Rosa Symphony, Florida Orchestra), Mahler’s Symphony  No. 8, Haydn’s Creation, Britten’s War Requiem, the Brahms Requiem, and a leading turn in Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg at Avery Fisher Hall.  Mr. Elzinga has worked with many noted conductors, including James Levine.