Jubilant Sykes, a celebrated baritone opera singer, was fatally stabbed on Monday night in his home in Santa Monica, Calif., and his son was arrested in the attack, police officials said.
After the Santa Monica Police Department responded to a call about an assault at a house around 9:20 p.m., officers found Sykes, 71, with critical injuries consistent with a stabbing, the authorities said in a news release. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Micah Sykes, the singer’s 31-year-old son, was found inside the home and taken into custody without incident.
It was unclear what led to the stabbing or if anyone else was involved. A detective from the Santa Monica Police Department assigned to the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
“The circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation,” the police said in the news release. “The suspect will be booked for homicide, and the case will be presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for filing consideration.”
Sykes performed at some of the world’s most prominent opera stages, including at Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and the Barbican Center in London. In 1990, he performed the role of Jake in a production of “Porgy and Bess” at the Metropolitan Opera.
Sykes also sang jazz and spiritual music and performed with many orchestras and conductors, including the Atlanta Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic, according to his website.
Anthony Tommasini, who for more than two decades was the chief classical music critic for The New York Times, once wrote that his favorite recording of “Mass,” by Leonard Bernstein, included Sykes’s performance as the Celebrant. A recording of “Mass” by Sykes, performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, was nominated for the Grammy Award for best classical album in 2009.
In 2019, Sykes told his alma mater, Cal State Fullerton, that he initially had no dreams of becoming an opera singer. But he saw — and loved — his first opera at the school.
Still, when it came time to perform, he said, he feared he did not have the ability to master the demanding skills required of an opera singer. He would later acknowledge a love-hate relationship with singing.
“I like singing, but I’m human, and there are moments when I don’t like what I do,” he said in a radio interview in 1998. “I don’t like the way it comes out regardless of how it affects the audience. I am the first to know when it’s right, and when it’s not the way it should be.”
“There are some performances that you wish you could carry around,” he added. “I have a tendency to be a lot harder on myself.”
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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