Playing a Teenager May Earn This Alum a Grammy
Omar Najmi sang the lead role in Adoration, nominated for best opera recording
Omar Najmi sings the lead role in the Grammy-nominated Adoration. He also organizes performances with Boston’s Catalyst New Music. Photo by Nile Scott Studios
Playing a Teenager May Earn This Alum a Grammy
Omar Najmi sang the lead role in Adoration, nominated for best opera recording
This article was originally published in Bostonia on January 29, 2026. By Joel Brown
EXCERPT
Omar Najmi had to take a slightly unusual approach to winning the role that earned him a Grammy nomination this year. He had to dial back his voice to sound more like a teenager. “I was just like, all right! Here goes nothing!” Najmi (CFA’11) says with a laugh. “We’re just gonna try out some things.” The tenor is nominated as the principal soloist in the Best Opera Recording category for Adoration, an electroacoustic chamber opera by composer Mary Kouyoumdjian and librettist Royce Vavrek.
Produced in New York in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects and adapted from the film by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica), it follows a high school student whose fictional story about a terrorist plot goes viral.
The Washington Post praised the production for its “uncanny capture of the information age and its anxieties,” adding, “It’s an opera that could help shape the future of the form.”
Najmi sings the lead character, Simon, a jeans-and-hoodie-clad 17-year-old. When he auditioned, he used his regular, full-bodied operatic voice. “I don’t remember if it was Beth or Mary, the composer, saying, ‘Okay, that was beautiful, but this role is a 17-year-old high school student. Can you sing these excerpts in a way that’s younger-sounding and less bel canto [style]?’’
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BIGGEST ASSET: BU OPERA INSTITUTE
“The biggest asset that the program at BU had for me professionally was the Opera Institute,” Najmi says. “So I was singing alongside amazing career-ready singers. One of them is now singing leading Wagner roles at Bayreuth. That was a huge influence on me, learning how to sing next to these people.”
His first professional roles came through members of the BU faculty who had positions with the Boston Lyric Opera and other companies in the city. They often thought of him when they needed a last-minute tenor replacement.
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ABOUT BU OPERA INSTITUTE
Boston University Opera Institute is an intensive, highly selective two-year performance-based training program for emerging operatic artists. Each Institute member receives a full tuition scholarship, and graduates from Boston University College of Fine Arts with a Performance Diploma in Opera.
Through our professional curriculum model, the Opera Institute provides a performance-based curriculum taught by full-time and adjunct faculty members along with guests from the operatic profession. The program includes voice lessons, repertoire coaching, Italian Conversation, Acting, Movement (Stage Combat, Ballet, Period Styles, Commedia, Alexander Technique).