Opera Scotland

Iain Paterson Suggest updates

Born Glasgow, 1973.

Scottisn bass-baritone.

Iain Paterson trained at the RSAMD and was then a member of the chorus of Opera North for four years.  He now enjoys a varied and distinguished international career.  On the operatic stage he has sung with the Royal Opera, ENO and the Paris Opera, as well as the Salzburg Easter Festival and Bayreuth Festival. In the USA he has worked at Chicago and Houston Operas and the New York Met. 

With Welsh National in 2003 he sang Ferrando (Il trovatore). On the Glyndebourne Tour he appeared as Mozart's Figaro (2005) which came to Edinburgh, and at the Glyndebourne Festival appeared as Mr Redburn in Billy Budd (2010). He returned to ENO in 2012 for further performances in the title role of Don Giovanni, sang Sachs there in 2015 and created Leontes in the 2017 premiere of Ryan Wigglesworth's The Winter's Tale.

He is well known for Wagnerian roles and has sung at the New York Met as Gunther in Götterdämmerung (in 2008, returning for a new staging in 2012, which was broadcast live to cinemas worldwide). In the Royal Opera's Ring cycles in 2012 he sang Fasolt as well as Gunther. A Bayreuth debut also came in Götterdämmerung, and he returned for Kurwenal in 2015.

In 2013 he sang Sachs in a concert performance of Die Meistersinger with Mark Elder and the Hallé in Manchester, also appearing as Amfortas in Parsifal. In April 2013 he sang his first Wotan in Das Rheingold for the Houston Opera, and sang it in concert at the 2013 BBC Proms with Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle. The 2013/14 season opened with a return to Covent Garden for Orest in Elektra, a role he sang in an Edinburgh Festival concert back in 2006.

In this most international of careers, the opportunities for Scottish audiences to see him on the operatic stage have been limited.  Can we hope to hear him again?

Update: May 2017.