Simon Keenlyside
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Simon Keenlyside (born August 3, 1959, London, England), is a British baritone opera singer, the son of Raymond and Ann Keenlyside. Both his father and his grandfather were professional violinists. His father played second violin in the Aeolian Quartet. Keenlyside has said: "Where other children would have nursery rhymes, I’d go to bed to the sounds of Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert."
Keenlyside read biology at Cambridge University before studying singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. After graduation, 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.”
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.
Keenlyside 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.
His recordings include several issues for Hyperion Records, including music of Benjamin Britten, Emmanuel Chabrier, Maurice Duruflé and Henry Purcell. He is also a featured singer on five volumes of the Hyperion Franz Schubert Edition and on the second volume of the Hyperion Robert Schumann Edition.
In 2004, Keenlyside sang the role of Prospero in the world premiere performances of Thomas Adès' The Tempest.[1] He is scheduled to participate in the planned EMI Classics recording of the opera.[2]
His hobbies include running; whilst at Royal Northern College of Music, he joined the Sale Harriers.
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[edit] Operatic roles
- Winston Smith in 1984
- Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos
- Ubalde in Armide
- Billy Budd/Donald in Billy Budd
- Catechiste in Briseis
- Olivier in Capriccio
- Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte
- Falke in Die Fledermaus
- Papageno in Die Zauberflöte
- Abayaldos in Dom Sebastien
- Posa in Don Carlos
- Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni
- Ford in Falstaff
- Hamlet in Abroise Thomas' Hamlet
- Figaro in The Barber of Seville
- Oreste in Iphigenie en Tauride
- Silvio in I Pagliacci
- Marcello in La Boheme
- Mercurio in La Calisto
- Dandini in La Cenerentola
- Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro
- Arthus in Le Roi Arthus
- Belcore in L'Elisir d'amore
- Gendarme in Les Mamelles de Tiresias
- Lescaut in Manon Lescaut
- Orfeo in Monteverdi's La Favola d'Orfeo
- Montano in Otello
- Pelléas in Pelleas et Melisande
- Ned Keene in Peter Grimes
- Wolfram in Tannhauser
- Ping in Turandot
- Danilo in The Merry Widow
- Prospero in The Tempest,
- Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia
- Prince Yeletski in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades
- Andrei in Prokofiev's War and Peace
[edit] Honours and Awards
- 1986: won the Richard Tauber prize for singers
- 1987: won the Walter Gruner International Lieder competition
- 1990: won the Elly Ameling competition
- 1994-1995: Singer of the Year Awards from the Critics Circle and the Royal Philharmonic Society
- 2003: made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday honours list "for services to Music".
- 2004: won the Laurence Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in Opera for performances as Prospero in The Tempest
- 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.
