Alastair Miles

British bass Alastair Miles is one of the United Kingdom’s most renowned singers. He began his international career in 1986, when he won the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize. Since then he has enjoyed considerable personal acclaim in a wide range of roles in opera houses and concert halls in Europe, the USA and the Far East.

Highlights of his career include Giorgio (I puritani) and Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor) at the Metropolitan Opera; Basilio (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Giorgio for the San Francisco Opera; Cardinal Brogni (La Juive), Padre Guardiano (La forza del destino), the Prefect (Linda di Chamounix), Zaccaria (Nabucco) and Philip II (Don Carlos) at the Vienna State Opera; Claggart (Billy Budd) for Opera North; Lord Sidney (Il viaggio a Reims) at La Scala, Milan; Handel’s Saul, Arkel (Pelléas et Mélisande), Creonte in Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, Timur (Turandot), Zoroastro (Orlando) and Lodovico Nardi (Die Gezeichneten) at the Bavarian State Opera; Leporello (Don Giovanni) for Opera Vlaanderen and Opera North; and Giorgio, Raimondo, Mozart’s Figaro, Cardinal Brogni and Narbal (Les Troyens) at the Dutch National Opera.

Alastair Miles appears regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where his roles have included Colline (La bohème), Rodolfo (La sonnambula), Elmiro in Rossini’s Otello, Banco (Macbeth), Dom Juam de Sylva in Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien, Count des Grieux (Manon) and Poliferno in Steffani’s Niobe. At the Glyndebourne Festival he has been heard as Pogner (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), the Commendatore (Don Giovanni), Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra) and the Speaker (Die Zauberflöte).

Other roles in Alastair Miles’s repertoire include Claudio (Agrippina), Enrico VIII (Anna Bolena), Talbot (Maria Stuarda), Alfonso (Lucrezia Borgia), Silva (Ernani), the title role in Mefistofele, Bertram (Robert le diable), Méphistophélès in Faust and La Damnation de Faust, Nourabad (Les Pêcheurs de perles) and Daland (Der fliegende Holländer). In these and other roles he has appeared at the English National Opera, the Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin as well as in Dijon, Lille and Liège and at the Salerno Festival.

Alastair Miles is also in demand as a concert artist and has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras under conductors of the eminence of Giulini, Muti, Harnoncourt, Chung, Rattle, Runnicles, Masur, Gergiev, Gardiner, Harding, Norrington, Colin Davis and Dohnányi. In addition to his many recordings for Opera Rara, his discography currently stands at over 90 CDs, among them a highly-acclaimed recital of lieder by Brahms and Wolf.

Prior to his Salzburg Festival appearances as Melisso (Alcina), engagements of the 2018/19 season have taken him to the Paris Opéra for Paulin in the world premiere of Michael Jarrell’s Bérénice and to Zurich for Count des Grieux.