Matt Arnold

Sunday, March 21, 2027
Peter and the Wolf

Tenor and conductor Matthew Arnold brings a natural storyteller’s voice and a warm stage presence to Prokofiev’s beloved Peter and the Wolf, drawing on a career that spans both the opera stage and the podium. Audiences on the North Shore already know him well as the leader of the New England Yankees big band, where his knack for connecting with a crowd — and for making an evening feel like a shared story — has made his performances a local favorite for family and community audiences alike.

On the opera stage, Arnold has performed principal and featured roles with Odyssey Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Miami Music Festival, including Frederick Douglass in Busby, Prince Yamadori in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and roles in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. He has also sung the title role of The Tenor/Bacchus in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and covered leading roles in Wagner’s Die Walküre and Britten’s Peter Grimes — repertoire that has sharpened both his vocal range and his sense for character and drama, skills he brings directly to narrating Prokofiev’s tale of a boy, a wolf, and a menagerie of musical characters.

Arnold is also an active conductor, having led the Star of the Sea Orchestra in performances of Salieri’s Requiem, Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. A finalist in the 2024 Lauritz Melchior International Singing Competition in Aalborg, Denmark, he holds a Performing Artist Certificate in Voice from the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, a Master of Music from UNC Greensboro, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Delaware.

Arnold currently serves as Director of Music at Our Lady Star of the Sea in Marblehead, MA, where his work with the New England Yankees big band and the Star of the Sea Orchestra has made him a familiar and beloved musical voice throughout the community — the perfect guide for this afternoon’s musical adventure.