Opera because I love this city and the opera company so much,' Holiday said. 'When they offered me this role, I was excited to know that it would be at L.A. He made his debut there in 2014 playing a female witch in Dido and Aeneas and has long been supported by the company. However, in addition for the opportunity to work with Aucoin, Holiday was motivated because he has a special place in his heart for the L.A. He has written this beautiful work that I think really speaks to people on so many different levels.'

'The word 'genius,' I think, is very fitting for him,' Holiday said of Aucoin. Aucoin was happy to have Holiday, a Juilliard alumnus and award-winning performer who has graced the stages of the Met and a Jason Mraz concert alike. Holiday had asked his manager to directly reach out to the 2018 MacArthur Fellow for Eurydice, a hotly anticipated production that, after Los Angeles, will move to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was always a dream of Holiday's to work with Aucoin, a composer who at 29 has been hailed as a rising star in the world of classical music. Yet he is also an ally whose presence reminds Orpheus, 'I've got your back. He is a 'supernatural being that that speaks for Orpheus when Orpheus can't say something or when Orpheus wants to say something on a heightened level,' Holiday says. The performer sees a dual role for his character. One of Holiday's primary tasks in Eurydice was diving into the nature of this role. He portrays Orpheus’s Double, who sings onstage alongside the performer cast as the mythical figure, Joshua Hopkins, in order to imbue his music with an ethereal element. Holiday, a 34-year-old countertenor - the highest register for a male singer - has a unique role in the production at the Music Center's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In Eurydice, a new opera by composer Matthew Aucoin at the Los Angeles Opera, that voice belongs to a gay Black singer, John Holiday.

In ancient mythology, Orpheus was a musician whose beautiful voice and lyrical talent convinced the gods to return his dead wife, Eurydice, to the world of the living.

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