Simon Keenlyside

The baritone Simon Keenlyside was born in London and appears regularly as a guest artist at the world’s leading opera houses. He has longstanding collaborative partnerships with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and with the Bavarian and Vienna State Operas. For these houses he has sung roles such as Prospero in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, Posa (Don Carlo), Giorgio Germont (La traviata), Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Pelléas and Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande) and the title roles of Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Wozzeck, Billy Budd, Hamlet, Macbeth and Rigoletto.

In the 2022/23 season he has appeared at the Vienna State Opera as Rigoletto and Macbeth, and as Balstrode (Peter Grimes) at the Paris Opéra. Other recent highlights include Golaud at the Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and Ezio (Attila) at Covent Garden.

As a noted recitalist, Simon Keenlyside appears regularly at London’s Wigmore Hall, at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, at La Monnaie in Brussels, at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein and at the Zurich Opera House. In concert, he works with orchestras such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia and the Cleveland Orchestra, and with the Czech, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras.

His wide-ranging discography includes Schumann Lieder with Graham Johnson, several albums of works by Schubert, Strauss and Brahms with Malcolm Martineau and the CD Songs of War, also with Martineau, which won a Gramophone Award in 2012. He also appears on recordings of Britten’s War Requiem with the London Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda, Mendelssohn’s Elijah under Paul McCreesh, Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn under Simon Rattle and Orff’s Carmina Burana under Christian Thielemann.

Complete opera recordings in which he has participated include Macbeth under Edward Gardner, Don Giovanni under Claudio Abbado, La bohème (Marcello) under Riccardo Chailly, Billy Budd under Richard Hickox and Die Zauberflöte under Charles Mackerras. He also appears on recordings of Le nozze di Figaro under René Jacobs and The Tempest under the baton of the composer, each of which received a Grammy Award in the category of ‘Best Opera Recording’.

In 2003 Simon Keenlyside was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 2018 he received a knighthood. In 2017 he was made an Austrian Kammersänger. In 2006 he won a Laurence Olivier Award in the category ‘Outstanding Achievement in Opera’ and in 2007 he received an Echo Klassik in the category ‘Singer of the Year’.