The bass Andrew Gangestad was the winner of the 2005 Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation Voice Competition and the recipient of the Robert Lauch Memorial Grant from the Wagner Society of New York. He made his début at the Metropolitan Opera in 2000–01 in Alban Berg’s Lulu, and has returned each season, appearing as Truffaldino in Ariadne auf Naxos, Count Ceprano in Rigoletto, Lignière in the company première of Cyrano de Bergerac, Trojan Bass in Idomeneo, Vaudemont in I vespri siciliani, Cappadocian in Salome, the Commissioner in Madama Butterfly, Javelinot in Dialogues des Carmélites, Timur in Turandot, and the Forester in Don Carlo. He made his début with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of James Levine, singing Brander in La Damnation de Faust in Boston and at Carnegie Hall, a rôle which he repeated at the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw.