Ethan Freeman comes from Eastchester, New York, and received a degree in Music from Yale University.
Ethan Freeman comes from Eastchester, New York, and received a degree in Music from Yale University.
Following early professional engagements as a boy soprano, and as a Street Chorus soloist in the 1981 Kennedy Center revival of Bernstein's Mass, he moved to Vienna to continue training in opera at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts, receiving his degree with distinction. Roles included Pluto in Orpheus In the Underworld (Vienna Chamber Opera at the Palm Beach Festival), Benggston in the Austrian premier of Raimann's Gespenster Sondte and Macheath in The Beggar's Opera.
In 1986 he appeared in the role of Joy in a Germany-wide tour of a new children's musical Timuria to which he also contributed a song text. In Hamburg he played Bustopher and Gus/Growltiger for Cats. He returned to Vienna's Theatre An Der Wien as The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera under the direction of Harold Prince becoming the youngest actor to play the role at that time and the first to do so in a language not his own.
His first appearance at West End is as Monsieur Andre in The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's in 1991, and he later assumed the role of The Phantom. 
He returned to Vienna to create the role of Narrator/Assassin Luigi Lucheni in the world premiere of the Austrian hit musical Elisabeth, under the direction of Harry Kupfer. He then played the Beast in the Vienna production of Beauty and the Beast before returning to the role of the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera in Toronto. He then returned to London to play Javert in Les Misérables, and went on to star in the Bremen, Germany production of Jekyll & Hyde. Most recently, he was seen in the role of Leopold Mozart in Mozart! in Hamburg. This winter, he will play Scrooge in a musical adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Vom Geist der Weihnacht.
He sang with Skitch Henderson's New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and on their Japan tour; played Max in Bernstein's Candide at the Innsbruck Summer Musical Festival and Che in Evita at the Open Air Festival at Schwebisch Hall, Germany. He was a soloist in a BBC Radio Two tribute to American Musicals and recorded Hajj (The Poet) in Kismet for the BBC. He was seen in London as Whitelaw Savory at the Covent Garden Opera House's production of One Touch of Venus, and as Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar in Tecklenburg. He is a regular guest at the Dinslaken Sommernacht des Musicals, and will appear next year in Musicals on Ice.
Other recordings include: Sweet Charity, On The Town, Brigadoon, Grease, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Phantom of the Opera, the German cast recordings of Die Schöne und das Biest, Elisabeth and Jekyll & Hyde, and his own solo album With You.