Stuart Skelton

The Australian tenor Stuart Skelton began his vocal training at the Conservatory of Music in his native Sydney. After winning the McDonald’s Aria Competition, he continued his education in the United States at the University of Cincinnati, gaining practical experience as a scholarship fellow in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program. In 1997 he won first prize at the International Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna and launched his career, which soon led him to Wagner. At the age of just 29, he made his role debut as Lohengrin in Karlsruhe, but his repertoire has since expanded to include Parsifal, Rienzi, Erik in The Flying Dutchman, Siegmund in Die Walküre, and Tristan. By no means confined to Wagner, Skelton also performs roles by Beethoven (Florestan in Fidelio), Tchaikovsky (Hermann in Pique Dame), Strauss (Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos), and Janáček (Laca in Jenůfa and Boris in Kát’a Kabanová). He is especially acclaimed for his interpretation of Britten’s Peter Grimes. Skelton performs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, La Scala in Milan, and the Opéra national de Paris, as well as the Bavarian, Saxon, and Vienna Staatsoper companies. He sang the title role in Verdi’s Otello with the Berlin Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta at the Baden-Baden Easter Festival in 2019, where he appeared as Tristan in 2016 under Sir Simon Rattle. Skelton has also collaborated with Rattle to record Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. He has additionally worked with such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Antonio Pappano, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Skelton was named Singer of the Year at the 2014 International Opera Awards.

July 2019