Jeremy Ovenden

British tenor Jeremy Ovenden studied at the Royal College of Music and Drama in London, where his teachers included Norman Bailey and Neil Mackie. An award from the Ian Fleming Foundation in 1994 allowed him to continue studies with Nicolai Gedda. Following his operatic debut as Don Ottavio in a production of Don Giovanni by Corrado Rovaris and Daniele Abbado, Ovenden quickly became a sought-after Mozart performer and has appeared in the role of Ferrando in Così fan tutte at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Bavarian Staatsoper, and the Royal Opera House in London; in Vienna he sang Il sogno di Scipione under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, while the Salzburg Festival engaged him during the Mozart anniversary year 2006 for the grand trilogy titled Irrfahrten (La finta semplice, Lo sposo deluso, and L’oca del Cairo) in the staging by Joachim Schloemer. For the 2004-05 season opening at La Scala in Milan, Ovenden made his debut in Salieri’s L’Europa riconosciuta under Riccardo Muti. Since then he has been a regular guest there and has performed in Don Giovanni under Gustavo Dudamel as well as in Handel’s Alcina under Giovanni Antonini. Recent engagements have included Nerone in Monteverdi’s Poppea at the Paris National Opera and Tigrano in Handel’s Radamisto at the Theater an der Wien; he has additionally undertaken a tour with René Jacobs, singing Belfiore in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera. In the concert arena, Jeremy Ovenden is known above all as a performer of baroque and classical works, collaborating with such conductors as Ivor Bolton, Colin Davis, Andrew Manze, Paul McCreesh, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Christophe Rousset. In 2011 a CD of Mozart arias that Ovenden recorded with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was released.

One previous appearance at LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) on 4 April 1998 in Bach’s St. John Passion under the direction of Trevor Pinnock.

March 2012