Alastair Miles | |
---|---|
Born | Harrow, England | 11 July 1961
Education | Guildhall School of Music Royal Academy of Music |
Occupation(s) | opera singer, bass |
Awards | Decca-Kathleen Ferrier Award (1986) John Christie Award (1987) |
Alastair Miles (born 11 July 1961, Harrow, England) is a British operatic and concert bass who has had an international career since the late 1980s. [1]
Alastair Miles was educated at The John Lyon School, Harrow, and subsequently at St Marylebone Grammar School. He began flute lessons at the age of fourteen with the composer Albert Alan Owen, a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, who inspired him to think about a career in music. Miles studied flute at the Guildhall School of Music under Trevor Wye, Peter Lloyd and Edward Beckett. He became an orchestral player and taught at Stowe School and Chetham's School of Music before embarking on his vocal career. From 1982 to 1985 he sang as a Lay Clerk in the choir of St. Albans Cathedral under the direction of Stephen Darlington. Having studied with bass-baritone Richard Standen whilst at the Guildhall, he was prompted by English National Opera baritone Geoffrey Chard, a near-neighbour of his parents, to have lessons with Bruce Boyce. It was while he was with Boyce that he decided on a career in opera, and in 1986 won a place at the National Opera Studio.
Alastair Miles won the 1986 Decca-Kathleen Ferrier Award at Wigmore Hall and the 1987 John Christie Award [ permanent dead link ] at the Glyndebourne Festival. His recording of Mendelssohn's Elijah, in which he sang the title role, won Gramophone magazine's Best Choral Award for 1993.
Alastair Miles is well known for bel canto roles and is considered an ideal Verdi bass. [2] He has been called 'the finest bass of his generation'. [3]
Alastair Miles has sung at the Metropolitan Opera (Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Giorgio in I Puritani and Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor); Paris – Bastille (Raimondo); Vienna (Prefetto in Linda di Chamonix, Giorgio in I Puritani, Cardinal Brogni in La Juive, Silva in Ernani, Zaccaria in Nabucco, Walter in Luisa Miller, Philippe II in Don Carlos, Padre Guardiano in La Forza del Destino and Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress); Bayerische Staatsoper (Giorgio, Raimondo, title role in Handel's Saul, Zoroastro in Orlando); San Francisco Opera (Giorgio, Raimondo and Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia); Amsterdam (Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, Raimondo), Madrid (Philip II in Don Carlo, Raimondo and Muley-Hassem in Emilio Arrieta's La Conquista di Granata); Seville (Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust); Palermo (Walter in Luisa Miller); Pesaro (Le Gouverneur in Rossini's Le Compte Ory) and La Scala, Milan (Melisso in Alcina and Lord Sidney in Il Viaggio a Rheims).
He regularly appears with all the UK opera companies. Roles for Welsh National Opera include Colline (La Bohème), Silva, Zaccaria, Mephistopheles (Gounod and Berlioz), Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra), Talbot (Maria Stuarda) [4] and Enrico (Anna Bolena). [5] For Glyndebourne Festival Opera: Pogner (Die Meistersinger), [6] Speaker (Die Zauberflöte), Fiesco. For Opera North: Philip II, Zaccaria and Leporello. [7] For English National Opera: Colline, Harasta (The Cunning Little Vixen), Zaccaria, Silva, title role in Boito's Mefistofeles, Ford in Vaughan Williams' Sir John in Love and Alfonso d'Este ("Lucrezia Borgia"). For the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden: Colline, Lord Sidney (Rossini's Il Viaggio a Rheims), Sparafucile, Rodolfo ( La Sonnambula ), Elmiro (Rossini's Otello), Banquo (Macbeth), Brogni (La Juive), Poliferno ( Niobe, regina di Tebe ) and Dom Juam de Sylva in Donizetti's Dom Sebastien.
Alastair Miles has appeared with many conductors and orchestras including Giulini, Harnoncourt, Mazur, [8] Muti, Chung, Rattle, Runnicles, Masur, Gergiev, Gardiner, Norrington, Davis and Dohnanyi. Recent projects have included performances of La Damnation de Faust, The Dream of Gerontius and Handel's Messiah with Davis and the LSO, Schumann's Faustszenen with Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Tilson-Thomas.
His discography numbers more than 80 recordings including Verdi's Don Carlos, [9] the songs of Richard Strauss, [10] and the solo CD Great Operatic Arias for Chandos. He works with Opera Rara to bring neglected nineteenth century Italian and French Opera to a wider public. On that label he has recorded Ambroise Thomas' opera comique, La Cour de Célimène.
Nicolai Ghiaurov was a Bulgarian opera singer and one of the most famous basses of the postwar period. He was admired for his powerful, sumptuous voice, and was particularly associated with roles of Mussorgsky and Verdi. Ghiaurov married the Bulgarian pianist Zlatina Mishakova in 1956 and Italian soprano Mirella Freni in 1978, and the two singers frequently performed together. They lived in Modena until Ghiaurov's death in 2004 of a heart attack.
Mikhail Anatolyevich Svetlov is a Russian bass known for the range and beauty of his voice as well as his acting ability. His voice was described by The Washington Post as a "titanic, all-encompassing bass". He was nominated for a 2003 Grammy Award for a recording of Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat and is the first Russian bass ever to perform the title roles in Don Giovanni and The Flying Dutchman.
Cesare Siepi was an Italian opera singer, generally considered to have been one of the finest basses of the post-war period. His voice was characterised by a deep, warm timbre, a full, resonant, wide-ranging lower register with relaxed vibrato, and a ringing, vibrant upper register. Although renowned as a Verdian bass, his tall, striking presence and the elegance of phrasing made him a natural for the role of Don Giovanni. He can be seen in that role on Paul Czinner's 1954 film of the opera made during an edition of the Salzburg Festival under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwängler.
Ruggero Raimondi is an Italian bass-baritone opera singer who has also appeared in motion pictures.
Neil Shicoff is an American opera singer and cantor and known for his lyric tenor singing and his dramatic, emotional acting.
Ferruccio Furlanetto is an Italian bass. His professional debut was in 1974 in Lonigo, he debuted at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1979, in a production of Verdi's Macbeth, conducted by Claudio Abbado. He has gone on to sing numerous roles, including both Don Giovanni and Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Philip II in Verdi's Don Carlos, Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Zaccaria in Verdi's Nabucco, Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust, Orestes in Strauss' Elektra, Fiesco in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the title role of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, as well as many other roles.
Erwin Schrott is an Uruguayan operatic bass-baritone, particularly known for the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Marc Laho is a Belgian lyric tenor opera singer.
Bonaldo Giaiotti was an Italian operatic bass, particularly associated with the Italian repertory.
Matthew Rose is an English operatic bass.
Julian Konstantinov is a Bulgarian operatic bass particularly known for his interpretations of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, and the bel canto roles of Rossini and Donizetti. More recently he has become associated with the title role in Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, a role he has sung in numerous opera houses.
Stefan Dimitrov was a basso opera singer. Born in the Black Sea town of Burgas, Bulgaria, he was of Greek origin. He won four international singing competitions at the very beginning of his career: those in Toulouse, the "Erkel" in Budapest, the "s’Hertogenbosch" in the Netherlands, and the "Young Opera Singers" in Sofia. In 1965 Stefan Dimitrov met the piano accompanist and répétiteur, Malina Dimitrova, who graduated at this time and took her first steps in the opera accompanying field. They were later to be married. The couple had one son, Liuben, who graduated as solo pianist and later become part of the Genova & Dimitrov piano duo.
Sorin Coliban is a Romanian opera singer with an international career. His voice range is bass–baritone. He is known for the volume and projection of his voice, both of which help him to sing both bass and baritone roles. He is one of the few singers to have performed with two different voices in the same performance: bass-baritone and countertenor.
Stefan Szkafarowsky is an American opera singer (bass).
Ildàr Amìrovich Abdrazàkov is a Russian bass opera singer. Honoured Artist of Russia (2021).
Hervey Alan was an English operatic bass and voice teacher. During his career he sang leading roles with most of Great Britain's major opera institutions, including the Edinburgh Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Sadler's Wells Opera, and the Welsh National Opera. He is best known for creating the role of Mr. Redburn in the world premiere of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House, London, on 1 December 1951. Music critic Elizabeth Forbes wrote that his voice was "dark toned, resonant", and "especially effective as Zaccaria in Nabucco.
Andrea Mastroni is an Italian basso profondo. Born in Milan, he first studied clarinet before training as a singer and studying philosophical aesthetics.
Rafał Siwek is a Polish opera singer (bass).
Krisztián Cser is a Hungarian operatic and concert singer (bass) and physicist, the soloist of the Hungarian State Opera.
Kwangchul Youn is a South Korean operatic bass and academic voice teacher. He made an international career based in Germany, from 1994 to 2004 at the Berlin State Opera. He has performed leading roles at international opera houses and festivals, such as Gurnemanz in Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival, Mephisto in Faust at the Vienna State Opera, and King Marke in Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera.