David Wilson-Johnson (born 16 November 1950, in Northampton[1]) is a British operatic and concert baritone.

Career

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David Wilson-Johnson was educated at Wellingborough School, and studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. As a singer he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he won the Dove Prize for most distinguished student.

In 1976, Wilson-Johnson made his operatic debut in Henze's "We Come to the River" at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where he subsequently sang important roles in many operas. In 2006, he decided to retire from the stage production of opera performance, but return to stage Swallow for "Peter Grimes" (dir. Willy Decker / cond. Yutaka Sado) at Teatro Regio di Torino in 2010 [1]. He is still involved in giving concerts (including opera's concert version) worldwide with the major orchestras and recitals with his regular pianist David Owen Norris.

David Wilson-Johnson was Professor of Singing at the Conservatory of Amsterdam from 2005 to 2010, and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

He has worked with prominent conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Frans Brüggen, Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Carlo Maria Giulini, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, André Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, and Evgeny Svetlanov.

Proms

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After the 9/11 attacks of 2001 he sang Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under Leonard Slatkin at the 2001 Last Night of the Proms to a worldwide audience of 340 million.[2]

Discography

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David Wilson-Johnson has made over 250 CDs.

References

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  1. ^ "2010 Diary". Retrieved 14 February 2011.
  2. ^ Beethoven Ninth at Last Night of the Proms 2001 in the Guardian.
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