A COUNTERTENOR VIRTUOSO

Glyndebourne's latest new star
talks to RODERIC DUNNETT

<< Continued from Rodelinda review

At the tender age of 30 Robin Blaze, who recently triumphed as Bertarido in Glyndebourne Touring Opera's acclaimed Rodelinda, is still relatively new to the operatic stage. Blaze is already acclaimed worldwide, however, for his wide-ranging oratorio repertoire and recordings, mainly on Hyperion, of the Baroque (Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Purcell, Blow, Kuhnau and Bach's lesser known contemporaries) -- with The King's Consort, plus an extensive Bach discography with the Bach Collegium Japan (on BIS) and John Eliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists (on DG). He has recorded Blow (Cupid in the Masque Venus and Adonis), and Handel (Didymus in Theodora, with Paul McCreesh). Outside his native UK, he has appeared in King Arthur at the Boston Early Music Festival, in Handel opera at Karlsruhe, and in Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses in Lisbon with Harry Christophers (like Blaze, a former music student of Magdalen College, Oxford).

Blaze first sang Unulfo (the Bertarido was Daniel Taylor) in Rodelinda under Nicholas Kraemer in Jonathan Miller's staging during the early days of Broomhill Opera (recorded on Virgin Classics VCT545377 2); 'Dove sei?' and 'Vivi, tiranno!' were in his concert repertoire by the time he sang his own first Bertarido, for Nicholas McGegan at the Göttingen Festival in Germany last year.

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