ROBERT MURRAY
Robert Murray, tenor, studied at the Royal College of Music and the National Opera Studio. He won second prize in the Kathleen Ferrier awards 2003 and was a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Operatic roles at the Royal Opera House include Tamino ('Die Zauberflote'), Borsa ('Rigoletto'), Gastone ('La Traviata'), Harry ('La Fanciulla del West'), Lysander (‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’), Agenore ('Il re Pastore'), Belfiore (‘La Finta Giardiniera’), Jacquino (‘Fidelio’) and Don Ottavio (‘Don Giovanni’). He recently sang the title role in ‘Albert Herring’ for Glyndebourne On Tour, Tom Rakewell (‘The Rake’s Progress’) for Garsington Opera, The Simpleton (‘Boris Godunov’), Tamino, Toni Reischmann (Henze’s ‘Elegy For Young Lovers’), Idamante (‘Idomeneo’) and Don Ottavio (‘Don Giovanni’) for ENO; Benvolio (‘Romeo et Juliette’) at the Salzburg Festival and Ferrando (‘Cosi fan Tutte’) for Opera North. Future engagements include Male Chorus (‘Rape of Lucretia’) for Nantes Opera.
He has sung in concert with many of the leading early music specialists, and performances include Haydn’s Nelson Mass with Sir John Eliot Gardiner for the BBC Proms; Mozart’s C Minor Mass both with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras, and with Le Concert D’Astrée; the Evangelist in Bach’s St John Passion for the London Handel Festival; ‘Acis and Galatea’ (Damon) and Berlioz’s Grand Messe des Morts with the Gabrieli Consort & Players; the Mozart Requiem at London’s Barbican Mostly Mozart Festival with Harry Christophers and the Sixteen. At the Aldeburgh Festival, he has performed Britten’s War Requiem with Simone Young, and Britten’s ‘Our Hunting Fathers’ with the CBSO and Thomas Adès. At the Edinburgh Festival he has performed Strauss’s ‘Elektra’ with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Edward Gardner, Vaughan Williams’s ‘The Serenade to Music’ with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and David Jones, Schumann’s ‘Manfred’ with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov and Haydn’s 'Die sieben letzten Worte des Erlösers am Kreuze' with the SCO. In Europe he appeared in concert performances of ‘Tristan und Isolde’ with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev, in Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Yannick Nezet-Seguin. His recent engagements include Haydn’s ‘Creation’ with the Gabrieli Consort and Paul McCreesh at the Gstaad Festival, semi-staged performances of Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’ in London and Paris with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esk-Pekka Salonen, Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ at the Barbican and Bruckner’s ‘Mass in F’ in Madrid with the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de Espana. Forthcoming concert work includes performances of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ with the Copenhagen Philarmonic Orchestra and for the Oslo Kirkemusikk Festival.
In recital he has performed at the Newbury, Two Moors, Brighton and Aldeburgh Festivals and at London’s Wigmore Hall. He has toured ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’ extensively with Malcolm Martineau, and recorded a recital of Brahms, Poulenc and Barber with Simon Lepper for Voices on BBC Radio 3.
