James Johnson made his LA Opera debut in the Recovered Voices double bill (February/March 2008) of Zemlinsky's The Dwarf (as Don Estoban) and Ullmann's The Broken Jug (as Judge Adam). He returns in the 2008/09 season as Noye in Britten's Noye's Fludde and in the 2009/10 season as Duke Adorno in the U.S. premiere of Franz Schreker's The Stigmatized.

The American bass-baritone began his career as a member of the ensembles of the Staatstheater Braunschweig, the Cologne Opera and the Graz Opera. Afterwards he has appeared in productions in many of the great theaters of America and Europe, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opéra National de Paris, Gran Teatre del Liceu of Barcelona, the Staatsoper Stuttgart and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Engagements have also led him elsewhere throughout the world, ranging from the New National Theatre in Tokyo, the Megaron of Athens, the Royal Opera of Copenhagen, Théâtre de la Monnaie of Brussels and the opera houses of Marseille, Montpellier, Nice, Toulouse and Strasbourg. He has also appeared at the festivals of Bayreuth, Edinburgh, Aspen, Schleswig-Holstein and the Berliner Festwochen.

Conductors with whom he has sung include James Levine, James Conlon, Georges Prêtre, Michael Gielen, Michael Schønwandt, Philippe Jordan and Michel Plasson. He is also active as a concert singer and has performed with many renowned orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, the Danish National Radio Orchestra, the Süd- and Südwestfunk orchestras and the Staatsorchester Stuttgart. With these orchestras he has also recorded such works as Othmar Schoeck's Penthesilea, Alexander Zemlinsky's Lyrische Symphonie, B.A. Zimmermann's Requiem für einen jungen Dichter and Arnold Schönberg's Jakobsleiter.

His repertoire includes a wide range of roles in English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. While known primarily for his interpretation of the Heldenbariton roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss, he is equally at home in the music of composers ranging from the Baroque to the Modern era.