Rayfield Artists - David Wilson-Johnson

DAVID WILSON-JOHNSON

Baritone

"The Madrid cast was led by the English baritone David Wilson-Johnson as Merlin. He gave a stunning performance and had a strong presence on stage. His voice was round and showed the maturity of his years in opera."
- Opera Australia

The British baritone David Wilson-Johnson was born at Northampton, studied Modern Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Over a career already spanning thirty five years he has been a guest of the major opera houses and orchestras and festivals worldwide. He has sung under many distinguished conductors including Pierre Boulez, Frans Bruggen, Carlo-Maria Giulini, Hartmut Haenchen, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Oliver Knussen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Gustav Leonhardt, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, Kenneth Montgomery, Andre Previn, Sir Simon Rattle and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

Opera repertoire includes Le Rossignol, L’Enfant et les Sortilleges, Boris Godenov, Turandot, Werther and Die Zauberflote [all at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden] Peter Grimes [Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, Madrid], Billy Budd [ENO, ROH, Opera Bastille], La Damnation de Faust [ Berlin, Turin, Tanglewood] Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Die Zauberflote [Opera Garnier], Tristan und Isolde [Monte Carlo] Rameau’s Les Boreades [Salzburg Festival] Eight Songs for a Mad King of Peter Maxwell Davies [Opera Comique], Sir Michael Tippett’s A Midsummer Marriage [tv film] and the title role in Messiaen’s St Francois d’Assise [London, BBCTV, Lyon , Amsterdam, Brussels, New York and Edinburgh Festival].

Concert repertoire includes Parsifal, Mahler 8 with the NYO under Rattle at the BBC Proms, Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers under Knussen at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole and Brahms Requiem under Previn in Carnegie Hall, and Oslo, Haydn’s Seasons under Rattle , plus The Creation (educational projects in Amsterdam and Paris) with Bruggen, Britten’s Death in Venice under Montgomery and Enescu’s Oedipe in the Holland Festival.. He sang Beethoven’s Ninth under Leonard Slatkin at the Last Night of the Proms in 2001 after the events of 9/11 to a worldwide audience of 340 million.

Discography: .Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield), Goodbye to Broad Street (The Beatles) plus works of Bach [Leonhardt and Giulini] Beethoven [Mackerras], Stravinsky, Schoenberg [Knussen] Ravel [Previn] Frank Martin’s Jedermann Monologues, Schubert’s Winterreise and songs by Finzi and Quilter.

In recent months he has sung the title roles in Tippett’s King Priam [Nationale Reisopera and BBC Proms] Albeniz’s Merlin [Madrid Teatro Real] and Shostakovitch’s The Nose [Netherlands Opera] with Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and Messiaen’s ‘Saint Francois d’Assise’ (Edinburgh Festival) and recorded Mahler 8 with Simon Rattle.

Recent concerts have included tours of Spain singing Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’ with Robert King and The King’s Concert, and Bach’s Ich habe genug , Beethoven’s Ninth at the Theatre des Champs Elysees both with Frans Bruggen, Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony with Reinbert de Leeuw in Haarlem and Amsterdam , and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny and the Les Noces Tanzproject with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

David Wilson-Johnson teaches at the summer singing school he founded twenty years ago at Ferrandou in the Dordogne (www.ferrandou.org) and the Conservatorium of Amsterdam. He lives between houses in Amsterdam, London and France.