Opera Scotland

Christopher Maltman Suggest updates

Born Louth, Lincolnshire, 1970.

English baritone.

Christopher Maltman won the Lieder Prize at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1997, and has gone on to become one of the leading lyric baritones in opera, concert and recital work. He first studied Biochemistry at the University of Warwick before training from 1991 in London at the Royal Academy of Music. He later studied under Sesto Bruscantini and Thomas Hampson.

Prominent operatic roles have included Papageno (the Met, Glyndebourne, San Francisco, Covent Garden), Don Giovanni (Salzburg, Cologne, Munich, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Mexico City, Beijing, Covent Garden and the Edinburgh Festival) and Oreste Iphigénie en Tauride (Salzburg). Britten parts include Billy Budd (WNO, Munich, Turin, Seattle, Frankfurt), and Tarquinius (Aldeburgh, ENO, Montpellier and Munich).

Appearances with British opera companies have taken in Welsh National, Aldeburgh, English National, Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera. He has worked at most of the major international houses, including the Salzburg and Munich Festivals. He has appeared in the United States (San Francisco, Seattle, New York Met), Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, Zürich and Amsterdam. His range includes parts from Rossini's Figaro and Mozart's Count Almaviva, to Pelléas and more recently Posa, Luna, Boccanegra, Onegin and Shishkov (From the House of the Dead). He has also sung Prospero The Tempest (Vienna), Friedrich in Wagner's Das Liebesverbot (Madrid) and Wozzeck (Amsterdam). 

At the Royal Opera House his roles include Forester, Papageno, Guglielmo, Malatesta, Marcello, Ramiro (L'Heure Espagnole), Luna and Enrico Ashton. He created Sebastian in The Tempest (Thomas Adès).

Concert appearances include the Berlin Philharmonic with Rattle, Philharmonia (von Dohnányi), LSO (Colin Davis), LPO (Jurowski), New York PO (Masur), Boston Symphony (Conlon), Los Angeles PO (Salonen) and Cleveland Orchestra (Welser-Möst).

His first appearance in Scotland came in 1999 with a recital tour, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau. Since then he has appeared regularly in recitals and concerts at the Edinburgh Festival, including a number of performances of operatic roles which he has not performed elsewhere.

Source: various programme notes.

(Revised Aug 2017)