English baritone Stephen Gadd won the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship, and was a finalist in the inaugural Plácido Domingo Operalia Competition. A boy chorister at Coventry Cathedral, he was a choral scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, and studied singing at the Royal Northern College of Music.
His operatic engagements have included Filippo Beatrice di Tenda and Alphonse La Favorite for Chelsea Opera Group; Riccardo I Puritani, Enrico Lucia di Lammermoor and Yeletsky The Queen of Spades for the Opéra de Nantes; Escamillo Carmen for Welsh National Opera; Ferryman Curlew River for Opéra de Rouen; Balstrode Peter Grimes for the Opéras de Montpellier; De Siriex Fedora, The Speaker The Magic Flute and Conte di Luna Il trovatore for Opera Holland Park; Valentin Faust for the Opéra national du Rhin, Strasbourg; Chief of Military Police Cardillac for the Opéra de Paris (a performance available on Bel Air Classiques DVD); the title role in Don Giovanni for Opéra de Metz and Opéra de Rennes; Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro for the Salzburg Festival tour to Japan; Sonora La Fanciulla del West (a performance available on Opus Arte Blu Ray / DVD); Ping Turandot for the Royal Opera, London; Paolo Die Gezeichneten at the Salzburg Festival; Renato Un ballo in maschera for English National Opera; the title role in Macbeth for Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Glyndebourne On Tour; Giorgio Germont La traviata for Den Norske Opera; and Melot Tristan und Isolde at the Baden Baden Festival and for Glyndebourne Festival Opera (a performance available on Opus Arte Blu Ray / DVD) and the Royal Opera, London; and Lysiart Euryanthe for Glyndebourne Festival Opera.
Recent concert highlights include The Creation with the Ulster Orchestra under Jan Schultsz; the Nelson Mass with the Royal Scottish National Symphony Orchestra under Walter Weller; Mahler Symphony No. 8 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons;Elijah with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos; and Tristan und Isolde with both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski and the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen.
His recordings and broadcasts include Blackford Not In Our Time with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Nimbus), Britten A War Requiem with the Southern Sinfonia conducted by Simon Over (Classic fM), Mozart Coronation Mass and Vesperae solemnes de confessore and Dioclesian with The English Concert under Trevor Pinnock (DGG), Prince John Ivanhoe with BBC NOW under David Lloyd-Jones (Chandos), Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols with the RPO under Hilary Davan Wetton (Naxos) and Lysiart Euryanthe from the Beethoven Easter Festival, Warsaw, with the Orchestra of Polish Radio under Łukasz Borowicz (now available on PRCD).
He recently sang acclaimed performances as Gellner La Wally for Opera Holland Park and Kurwenal Tristan und Isolde for Grange Park Opera. Current engagements include Mr Redburn Billy Budd for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Father Hänsel und Gretel for Glyndebourne On Tour, Speaker Die Zauberflöte at the Lucerne Festival, Sharpless Madama Butterfly for Grange Park Opera, Storch Intermezzo for Buxton Festival Opera, a recording of The Beauty Stone for Chandos, Clistene L’Olimpiade with La Serenissima, Melot Tristan und Isolde for Dallas Opera, the première of Richard Blackford’s Not In Our Time with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Mahler Symphony No. 8 with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Lorin Maazel.
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