Paul Esswood

Paul Esswood supplied the only fully rounded, steady, feminine timbre built on a solid and unwavering vibrato before David Daniels rose to countertenor prominence. Conductors soon sought him out for engagements that valued both his scrupulous musicianship and his attractive tone. The landmark Bach recordings he made with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in the 1970s continue to reward listeners despite subsequent changes in Baroque performance practice. Esswood entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1961, where baritone Gordon Clinton served as his teacher. From 1964 until 1971 he sang as a lay vicar at Westminster Abbey. Several landmark debuts occurred during those years: a 1965 broadcast of Messiah led by Charles Mackerras, with whom he would later record the work, and his first stage appearance in Cavalli’s Erismena, given in Berkeley, California, in 1968. The next year he made his European opera debut in the title role of Scarlatti’s Il Tigrane in Basel. His assured command of Baroque opera soon brought further stage engagements in works by Monteverdi, Scarlatti, and Handel. In 1971 alone he appeared in all three of Monteverdi’s most celebrated operas, singing Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in Vienna, Orfeo at the Salzburg Festival, and L’incoronazione di Poppea in Amsterdam. He portrayed Death in Krzysztof Penderecki’s Paradise Lost at the 1978 Chicago premiere and again the following season at La Scala. Esswood created the title role in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten at Stuttgart in 1984, a part later issued on disc, and sang Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Cologne in 1988. At the 1990 Handel Festival in Karlsruhe he performed the title role in Admeto; the next year he sang Riccardo Primo at Covent Garden during the English Bach Festival. He created the role of Seff in Herbert Willi’s Schlafes Bruder in Zürich and repeated it in a subsequent production in Innsbruck. Outside opera, Esswood has remained active as a recitalist and concert singer. On concert platforms and at leading festivals worldwide he has performed repertoire extending from the Romantic era into contemporary music. In addition to Penderecki’s Paradise Lost he gave the premiere of that composer’s Magnificat. Two further premieres by Alfred Schnittke involved Esswood: the Faust Cantata and Symphony No. 2, “St. Florian,” the latter later released on disc. Across a lengthy career he has appeared on more than 150 recordings, among them no fewer than four accounts of Handel’s Messiah. His Teldec series comprises the complete Bach cantatas, while his solo discs survey Purcell, Schumann, Britten, and many other composers. Since 1985 Esswood has taught as professor of Baroque vocal studies at the Royal Academy of Music. He co-founded the Pro Cantione Antiqua in 1967.