Simon Keenlyside
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Simon Keenlyside(born August 3, 1959), is a noted baritone opera singer from Britain.
He was born in London, son of Raymond and Ann Keenlyside. Both his father and his grandfather were professional violinists. Raymond played second violin in the Aeolian Quartet. "Where other children would have nursery rhymes, I’d go to bed to the sounds of Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert."
Simon studied biology at Cambridge University before pursuing singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.
Having graduated, he won a Peter Moore Foundation Scholarship (1985) and chose to join the Royal Northern College of Music to study voice with John Cameron, who opened up the world of German Lieder to him. He says "I wanted to learn to sing, and earning money at that point would have been, I'm sure, detrimental to learning how to sing". “…when I was in my mid-twenties my voice wasn’t ready for opera. John was rightly concerned that I should not force my natural vocal weight, like some singers do – a Faustian pact you pay for later with wobble and nodules.”
Whilst at Royal Northern College of Music he joined the Sale Harriers to indulge his love of running - the quarter mile in particular.
Simon made his first stage appearance in 1987 as Lescaut in Manon Lescaut. Opera magazine remarked on it being an “astonishingly mature” performance, and that he “used his warm and clear baritone with notable musicianship”. At this time he realized that singing Lieder on the music club circuit was never going to be a living.
His professional debut as a baritone was in 1987 (and not 1988 as is usually stated) at the Hamburg Staatsoper where he sang Count Almaviva in the Marriage of Figaro.
In 1989 he was lured to Scottish Opera where he stayed until 1994, performing as, among other roles, Marcello (La Boheme), Danilo (The Merry Widow), Harlequin (Ariadne auf Naxos), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Figaro (Barber of Seville), Billy Budd (Billy Budd), Papageno (Zauberflöte) and Belcore (L'elisir d'amore). “It was fantastic training for me, couldn’t have been better”.
During this period he made debut performances at The Royal Opera House, (1989 singing Silvio), English National Opera (Guglielmo), Welsh National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Geneva, Paris, and Sydney. In an interview with the Scotsman he says that he learned his trade over five years in leading roles in Scotland, and he feels a "huge debt of gratitude" to the company. He sang for Glyndebourne for the first time in 1993 and made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1996.
He has performed at virtually all the major opera houses in the world, including the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Paris Opera and the Metropolitan Opera.
[edit] Operatic roles
1984 - Winston Smith Ariadne auf Naxos - Harlequin Armide - Ubalde Billy Budd - Billy Budd/Donald Briseis - Catechiste Capriccio - Olivier Cosi fan Tutte - Guglielmo Die Fledermaus - Falke Die Zauberflöte - Papageno Dom Sebastien - Abayaldos Don Carlos - Posa Don Giovanni - Don Giovanni Ford - Falstaff Hamlet - Hamlet il barbiere di Siviglia - Figaro Iphigenie en Tauride - Oreste I Pagliacci - Silvio La Boheme - Marcello La Calisto - Mercurio La Cenerentola - Dandini La Nozze de Figaro - Count Almaviva Le Roi Arthus - Arthus L'elisir d'amore - Belcore Les Mamelles de Tiresias - Gendarme Manon Lescaut - Lescaut Monteverdi’s La Favola d’Orfeo - Orfeo - usually a tenor role Otello - Montano Pelleas et Melisande - Pelleas - usually a tenor role Peter Grimes - Ned Keane Tannhauser - Wolfram Turandot - Ping The Merry Widow - Danilo The Tempest - Prospero The Rape of Lucretia - Tarquinius The Queen of Spades - Yeletski War and Peace - Andrei
[edit] Honours and Awards
1986 He won the Richard Tauber prize for singers
1987 He won the Walter Gruner International Lieder competition
1990 He won the Elly Ameling competition
1994-5 Singer of the Year Awards from the Critics Circle and the Royal Philharmonic Society
2003 He was made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday honours list "for services to Music".
2004
- Played Prospero in the The Tempest (Adès) which won him the Laurence Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in Opera
- Opera Award for the category Best Baritone (Don Giovanni, Théâtre de la Monnaie) from the Italian magazine L'Opera. (Source: L'Opera, December 2004)
- The XII Premios de la Crítica (Barcelona) awarded to Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay in Hamlet (opera) for the best male and female singers in a staged opera. (Source: Ópera Actual, October 19, 2004)
2005 Played Count Almaviva in the Rene Jacobs conducting Marriage of Figaro which won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.
2006 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding achievement in Opera, for his work in the ROH production of 1984 and ENO's Billy Budd (opera) in 2005.
