Toby Spence

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Toby Spence (born May 22, 1969 in London ) is a British opera singer ( tenor ).

Life

Spence comes from a musical family that once owned Squire Pianos , a piano manufacturer in north London. His father was a doctor and his mother a pianist who worked in the archives of the Royal College of Music . In her younger years she was the personal assistant to Walter Legge and Yehudi Menuhin . Artists and musicians regularly came to his family home for lunch. Spence attended Uppingham School, then studied music at New College in Oxford and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London . His teachers included Edward Higginbottom and David Polare. In 1995 he received a scholarship to the Ravinia Festival in the United States .

While still a student, Spence made his debut as a concert singer at the Barbican Center in London (under Neeme Järvi ), at RIAS Berlin (in Handel's Theodora ), at Wigmore Hall (with Schubert songs) and at the festivals in Cheltenham and Brighton .

Opera roles

Spence's professional operatic debut came in 1995 as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo , conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras at the Welsh National Opera . In the same year he sang the same role in Munich - with only one day of rehearsal. He subsequently took on minor roles in Alzira (under Mark Elder at the ROH Covent Garden ), in La Calisto under René Jacobs (in Brussels and at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival ) and in Mitridate, re di Ponto under Roger Norrington (at the Mozart Week and the Salzburg Festival ).

Mozart was to become a central axis in Toby Spence's repertoire: he sang Tamino in his Magic Flute , Ferrando in Così fan tutte , Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni and the title roles in Mitridate, re di Ponto and La clemenza di Tito . At the same time, however, tenor avoided allowing himself to be committed from the very beginning of his career and sang his way through the entire history of music , from Rameau , Handel and Bach to contemporary composers . In 2007 he was called "one of the most versatile singers in our country". He was quickly engaged in important theaters such as the Theater de la Monnaie in Brussels and the De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, the Scottish Opera , the Grand Théâtre de Genève , the Opéra National de Paris and the Teatro Real in Madrid , the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Hamburg State Opera and the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin.

However, a special close relationship always connected and connects the artist with Austria , where he was able to achieve considerable personal success early on in Salzburg and later in Vienna, and with the English National Opera , where he - alongside Tamino and Ferrando - played the Fenton in Verdis Falstaff , Almaviva in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia , Paris in Offenbach's La Belle Hélène , and the title roles in Gounod's Faust and Bernstein's Candide . He also worked to continue the tradition of singing foreign language operas in England in English.

It wasn't until 2004 that Spence was engaged for the first time in a leading role at the first opera house in his hometown, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden - as Ferdinand in the world premiere of Thomas Adès ' The Tempest . He also sang this role in 2006 at the American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera and in 2012 at the New York Met . The success in Tempest led to further engagements in Covent Garden - as Kudrjaš in Janáček's Katja Kabanowa , as Almaviva and Ramiro in the Rossini operas Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola , and in 2007 as Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress , directed by Robert Lepage . He sang this role, an explicit favorite role of the artist, in 2008 with great success at the Theater an der Wien - under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and directed by Martin Kušej . He was also heard and seen in the Lepage production in Madrid and Paris, and in a revival in London in 2010; the Viennese production was resumed in 2013.

Further appearances have taken the tenor to the Glyndebourne Festival , the San Francisco Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera , where he made his debut in 2011 as Nanki-Poo in The Mikado . In Brussels he sang David in the Mastersingers of Nuremberg for the first time under Antonio Pappano , and at the Edinburgh Festival he played Madwoman in Britten's Curlew River . In March 2013 he made his debut as Don Ottavio at the Vienna State Opera , in May 2014 he took over the title role in La clemenza di Tito . In June 2016 he played the title role in Mozart's Idomeneo at the Garsington Opera Festival .

Concert appearances

Toby Spence also has an active international concert career. Toby Spence made his debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1996 in Mozart's C minor Mass in St. Peter's Abbey Church , and in the following years sang smaller parts in five operas, in 2001 the tenor solos in C major masses by Mozart and Beethoven , and most recently 2009 in Haydn's Creation in English.

The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall

Spence made his debut at the London Proms in 1997 in Schubert's Mass No. 5 in A flat major (D 678) and has since sung there a further fifteen times. a. 1999 in Carl Nielsen's Fynsk foraar (Spring on Fyn), 2000 in Bach's St. John Passion , 2005 in Beethoven's Missa solemnis and 2011 in his ninth . Regarding this performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Choir , conducted by David Robertson , the Guardian wrote that the ensemble was able to "bring the finale to the level of joy it sings about."

Since 2001 the artist has worked closely with the Scottish Ensemble under the direction of Jonathan Morton , a chamber ensemble from Glasgow . The first joint project was the Saint Nicolas Cantata by Benjamin Britten . Since then, the tenor and ensemble have toured Scotland together every year, but they also give at least one concert in London's Wigmore Hall . There are two recordings, Britten's Les Illuminations , Op. 18 (2005), and Gerald Finzis Dies natalis , Op. 8 (2007).

Fixed points in his concert repertoire are Britten's War Requiem , which he u. a. sang in Vienna and Paris, as well as in London at the Proms and in St Paul's Cathedral , as well as Szymanowski's Stabat Mater , which he performed and recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev . Under Sir Simon Rattle took over the tenor solos in the St John Passion (with the Berlin Philharmonic ) and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (with the Vienna Philharmonic ), under Emmanuelle Haïm he sang at London's Barbican Center the disciple John in Handel's La Resurrezione (with Le Concert d'Astrée ) and the tenor solo in Handel's Messiah under Andrew Davis (with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra ).

Toby Spence has also given numerous concert performances of rarely performed operas, such as Handel's Berenice (under Alan Curtis in Paris), his Acis and Galatea (under Marc Minkowski at the Salzburg Mozarteum ), Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise (under Reinbert de Leeuw at the Edinburgh Festival ) or Bernsteins Candide (under Donald Runnicles in Berlin).

The tenor was self-critical of his initial attempts at recitals , which is why he stopped using this genre for a few years. Since 2012 he has appeared again in recitals, primarily singing Schubert , Schumann and Brahms , Debussy , Satie , Poulenc and Britten , but also the rarely played Les nuits d'été by Hector Berlioz in the original version with piano accompaniment. Spence has no reservations about so -called popular music , sings chansons by Jacques Brel , as well as operettas by Johann Strauss and musicals by Ivor Novello . With a selection of popular melodies by Novello, he achieved - together with the soprano Sophie Bevan - at the Proms 2012, later broadcast by the BBC, a considerable personal success.

Personal

In an interview for the Paris Opera in 2008, Spence named the soccer coach Arsène Wenger as one of his role models. He regularly attends exhibitions and concerts, enjoys going to the cinema, and loves traveling. In 2003 he was a backpack tourist in Iran for a few weeks and visited several old cities there. In 2012, his thyroid cancer was treated surgically.

Award

Recordings (selection)

Sacred music, choir / orchestral works

Opera

song

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Pines R. People 395: Toby Spence. Opera , November 2011, 1292-1300.
  2. ↑ Musical Critiscism , accessed on June 17, 2014
  3. ↑ a b c Chanter la débauche et la perdition. Line 8. Le journal de l'Opéra National de Paris. Mars-Avril 2008, 21-22. (Interview with Toby Spence, French).
  4. ↑ BBC Proms database  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 15, 2014@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.bbc.co.uk  
  5. ↑ Erica Jeal: Prom 61: BBCSO / Robertson / Ma-review , The Guardian , September 1, 2011
  6. ↑ Ivan Hewett: Proms 2012: Prom 36 Ivor Novello, Royal Albert Hall, review , The Telegraph , August 10, 2012
  7. ^ RPS Music Awards , accessed June 14, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Spence, Toby
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British opera singer (tenor)
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH London