Rayfield Artists - Andrew Radley

ANDREW RADLEY

Countertenor

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"...young British counter-tenor, Andrew Radley, stepped in as a last minute replacement...singing the role of Gandarte. He too acquitted himself extremely well both dramatically and musically..." - Opera Magazine review of Handel's Poro at the 2006 Göttingen Handel Festival.

British countertenor Andrew Radley specialises in the great opera roles written for the alto castrato voice by Handel and other leading composers of the 17th and 18th Centuries. He read Music at Cambridge before receiving scholarships to the postgraduate course and the opera course at the Royal Academy of Music. He participated in an Erasmus exchange to the Paris Conservatoire studying with Pierre Mervant. He continues to study with Noelle Barker, OBE.

Operatic roles include Gandarte in Handel's Poro for the Göttingen Handel Festival (Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/Konrad Junghänel), the title role in Handel's Flavio and Joachim in Handel's Susanna for the Early Opera Company/Christian Curnyn; the title role in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at the Spitalfields Festival; the title role in Handel's Tamerlano for the Cambridge Handel Opera Group; Halimacus (cover) in Keiser's Croesus for Opera North/Harry Bickett; and the title role in Handel's Orlando for Opera Theatre Company Ireland.

Recent concert engagements have included Handel's Saul with the Chester Bach Singers; Bach's B Minor Mass at St Martin-in-the-Fields; Handel and Scarlatti cantatas in the London Handel Festival with Laurence Cummings; Handel's Dixit Dominus at Snape Maltings with Richard Egarr (broadcast on BBC Radio 3); Bach's St Matthew Passion with the Britten Sinfonia; and Daniel in Handel's Belshazzar for Graeme Jenkins.

Engagements this season and beyond include a production of Handel's Belshazzar with René Jacobs at the Aix-en-Provence and Innsbruck Festivals and at the Berlin Staatsoper singing First Wise Man and covering the roles of Daniel and Cyrus; Orindo in Handel's Admeto at the Göttingen Handel Festival with Nicholas McGegan; Refugee in Jonathan Dove's Flight for British Youth Opera with Nicholas Cleobury; Didymus Theodora with Laurence Cummings at the opening concert of the 2009 London Handel Festival and in Oslo; and Nireno Giulio Cesare with the Freiburger Barockorchester under René Jacobs in Paris and Spain.

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