Simon Keenlyside

Simon Keenlyside has forged an international career as a baritone whose roles stretch from Baroque works to newly commissioned operas. He has appeared on major recordings for Sony Classical, EMI, and Hyperion.

Born in London on August 3, 1959, Keenlyside grew up in a musical household; his father played violin in the Aeolian Quartet while his maternal grandfather, Leonard Hirsch, was also a violinist. As a boy he sang in the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge University, and boarded at the choir school. Although he entered Cambridge to study zoology, he soon returned to singing as a choral scholar at St. John's. A Peter Moores Foundation scholarship took him to the Royal College of Music in Manchester, where he studied with John Cameron. While immersed in German lieder, he performed the role of Lescaut in Puccini's Manon Lescaut as a student, and his subsequent work has remained split between opera and recital.

His professional opera debut occurred in 1988 at the Hamburg State Opera, followed the next year by an appearance at London's Covent Garden in Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. In the early 1990s he joined the company of Scottish Opera. Keenlyside entered the recording catalog in 1994 on the Hyperion Schubert Edition album An 1815 Schubertiad - II; his first solo recital disc, Richard Strauss: Lieder Recital with pianist Malcolm Martineau, appeared on EMI two years later.

From the mid-1990s onward he has performed regularly at leading houses in Britain, continental Europe, and the United States. At the Metropolitan Opera he made his debut in 1996 as Belcore in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, and during that decade he sang several Mozart roles at La Scala. His unusually broad repertory encompasses two world premieres: the role of Prospero in Thomas Adès' The Tempest in 2004 and Winston Smith in Lorin Maazel's 1984 in 2005. Keenlyside also maintains an active schedule of orchestral concerts and has sustained a long lieder career that includes four further contributions to Hyperion's Schubert series as well as the 2011 album Songs of War, again with Martineau. His range was further demonstrated by the 2014 Chandos release Something's Gotta Give, devoted to Broadway material. In 2023 he issued Jonathan Dove: In Exile with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on the Lyrita label.