SANTA FE — Alek Shrader traded in rock music for opera and hasn't looked back since.

In high school and for most of college in Oklahoma, Shrader, a singer and guitarist, led a rock band named Anonymous.

His parents had been opera singers in Cleveland, then moved to Alva, where his father, James, headed the music department at Northwestern Oklahoma State University and his mother, Aija, was the department's voice teacher.

The young Shrader knew for certain that he didn't want to sing opera. "I wanted to follow my own path," he recalled.

But as a music education major at Northwestern State, Shrader had to take voice lessons.

''So I took lessons. I did competitions. The more I did the more I became attracted to it," he said.

''In my junior year of college I had to decide whether to pursue rock music or opera. ... Playing rock music was a lot of fun, but we weren't very good. We played in Alva, in Enid and in Wichita, Kansas."

So Shrader began pursuing a career in opera and found that it worked for him.

He was a winner of the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Shrader has sung with major opera companies in the United States and Europe.

His parents are Shrader's biggest fans. "They're both No. 1," he said.

Shrader's father is expected to see his son in the title role of "Albert Herring" on Saturday, July 31, at the Santa Fe Opera.

He's also singing the role of Tamino in the final SFO performance of "The Magic Flute" on Aug. 27.

After this summer Shrader will go to Los Angeles, where he will sing in a Sept. 2 concert version of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide." Then he's off to Spain for an October recital and after that heads to Munich, Germany, for a revival of Simon Mayr's opera "Medea in Corinto" with the Bavarian State Opera.