Ian Bostridge | |
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 Ian Bostridge, 2018 | |
| Born | Ian Charles Bostridge (1964-12-25)25 December 1964 (age 60) |
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Ian Charles BostridgeCBE (born 25 December 1964)[1] is an Englishtenor, well known for his performances as an opera andlieder singer.
Bostridge was born in London, the son of Leslie Bostridge and Lillian (née Clark).[2] His father was achartered surveyor.[3] Bostridge is the brother of writer and criticMark Bostridge, and they are the great-grandsons of theTottenham Hotspurgoalkeeper from the early twentieth century,John "Tiny" Joyce.[4][5]
He was aQueen's Scholar atWestminster School.[citation needed] He attendedSt John's College,Oxford, where he secured a First in Modern History andSt John's College,Cambridge, where he received anM.Phil. degree in theHistory and Philosophy of Science. He was awarded hisD.Phil. degree in history from Oxford[3][6] in 1990, on the significance ofwitchcraft in English public life from 1650 to 1750, supervised bySir Keith Thomas. He worked in television current affairs and documentaries for two years in London before becoming aBritish Academy post-doctoral fellow atCorpus Christi College, Oxford, teaching political theory and eighteenth-century British history. His bookWitchcraft and Its Transformations, c. 1650–1750 was published as an Oxford Historical Monograph in 1997. This book, "the most sophisticated and original of all recent histories of early modern demonology", according to Professor Stuart Clark,[7] has been influential in the study of thepre-Enlightenment. It "achiev[es] that rarest of feats in the scholarly world: taking a well-worn subject and ensuring that it will never be looked at in quite the same way again" (Noel Malcolm,TLS).[citation needed] In 1991 he won theNational Federation of Music Societies Award and from 1992 received support from the Young Concert Artists Trust.[citation needed]
Bostridge began singing professionally at age 27.[3] He made hisWigmore Hall debut in 1993, followed by an acclaimedWinterreise at thePurcell Room and hisAldeburgh Festival debut in 1994. In 1995, he gave his first solo recital in the Wigmore Hall (winning theRoyal Philharmonic Society's Debut Award). He gave recitals inLyon,Cologne, London and at the Aldeburgh,Cheltenham andEdinburgh Festivals in 1996 and at theAlte Oper, Frankfurt in 1997.
On the concert platform, he has appeared with theLondon Symphony Orchestra underSir Colin Davis andMstislav Rostropovich, theScottish Chamber Orchestra underSir Charles Mackerras, and theCity of Birmingham Symphony andBerlin Philharmonic underSir Simon Rattle.
His first solo-featured recording was forHyperion Records, aBritten song recital,The Red Cockatoo withGraham Johnson. His subsequent recording ofDie schöne Müllerin in Hyperion's Franz Schubert Edition won theGramophone's Solo Vocal Award for 1996. He won the prize again in 1998 for a recording ofRobert Schumann Lieder with his regular collaborator, the pianistJulius Drake and again in 2003 for Schumann'sMyrthen and duets withDorothea Röschmann and Graham Johnson, as part of the Hyperion Schumann edition.
An EMI Classics exclusive artist since 1996, he is a 15-timeGrammy Award nominee and 3-time winner. His CDs have won all of the major record prizes including Grammy, Edison, Japanese Recording Academy, Brit,South Bank Show Award, Diapason d'Or de l'Année, Choc de l'Année, Echo Klassik and Deutsche Schallplattenpreis. His recording of Schubert's "Die Forelle" with Julius Drake forms part of the soundtrack of the 2011 filmSherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. His album of Shakespeare Song for Warner Classics won the 2017 Grammy award and the Echo Klassik award for solo vocal.
Bostridge made his operatic debut in 1994, aged 29, asLysander inA Midsummer Night's Dream withOpera Australia at the Edinburgh Festival, directed byBaz Luhrmann. In 1996, he made his debut with theEnglish National Opera, singing his first Tamino (The Magic Flute). In 1997, he sang Quint inDeborah Warner's new production ofThe Turn of the Screw under Sir Colin Davis for theRoyal Opera. He has recorded Flute (Britten'sA Midsummer Night's Dream) with SirColin Davis for Philips Classics; Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) withWilliam Christie for Erato; Tom Rakewell (The Rake's Progress) underJohn Eliot Gardiner forDeutsche Grammophon (Grammy Award); and Captain Vere (Billy Budd) (Grammy Award) withDaniel Harding. In 2007 he appeared at the ENO in the role of Aschenbach in Britten'sDeath in Venice, in a production byDeborah Warner.
In 1997, he made a film ofSchubert'sWinterreise for Channel 4 directed byDavid Alden;[8] he has been the subject of a South Bank Show profile documentary on ITV[9] and presented the BBC 4 filmThe Diary of One Who Disappeared about Czech composerLeoš Janáček.[10] He has written forThe New York Review of Books,The New York Times,The Guardian,The Times,Financial Times,The Times Literary Supplement,Opernwelt,Gramophone,BBC Music Magazine,Opera Now andThe Independent.
Later engagements included recitals in Paris, Stockholm, Lisbon, Brussels, Amsterdam and theVienna Konzerthaus. In North America he appeared in recitals in New York City at theFrick Collection in 1998 andAlice Tully Hall in 1999 and made hisCarnegie Hall debut underSir Neville Marriner. Also in 1998, he sangVasek in a new production ofThe Bartered Bride underBernard Haitink for the Royal Opera and made his debut at theMunich Festival as Nerone (L'incoronazione di Poppea) and in recital (Winterreise at theCuvilliés Theatre). In 1999, he made his debut with theVienna Philharmonic underSir Roger Norrington. He works regularly with the pianistsJulius Drake,Graham Johnson,Mitsuko Uchida, composerThomas Adès[11] andCovent Garden music directorAntonio Pappano. Other partners at the piano have includedLeif Ove Andsnes,Håvard Gimse,Saskia Giorgini,Igor Levit, andLars Vogt.[citation needed]
In the summer of 2000 Bostridge gave the fifth annualEdinburgh University Festival Lecture entitled "Music and Magic".
In 2004, Bostridge was madeCBE for his services to music. He is an Hon RAM, honorary fellow ofCorpus Christi College,St John's College, and Wolfson College Oxford, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of St Andrews in 2003.[12] He was Humanitas Professor of Classical Music and Education at the University of Oxford, 2014–15 (part of theHumanitas Programme). In 2020/21 he was a visiting professor at Munich'sHochschule for Music and Theatre. From 2022 on he is giving courses onSchubert Lieder at theMusic and Arts University of the City of Vienna.
He gave the inauguralNicholas Breakspear lecture, "Classical Attitudes: Latin and music through the ages" at the University of Trondheim in 2015; and the annual BIRTHA lecture, "Humanity in Song: Schubert's Winter Journey" at the University of Bristol in the same year. He delivered theLincoln Kirstein Lecture, "Song and Dance", at NYU in 2016. He gave the Berlin Family Lectures at the University of Chicago in April 2021.
Bostridge had his own year-long Perspectives series atCarnegie Hall in 2005/6, and a twelve-month residency at the Barbican in 2008, "Homeward Bound". He has had a Carte Blanche season at the Concertgebouw and further artistic residencies in Luxembourg, Hamburg, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg and the Wigmore Hall.
On 11 November 2009 Bostridge sangAgnus Dei fromBenjamin Britten'sWar Requiem, at the Armistice Day service inWestminster Abbey. This uses the words of war poetWilfred Owen's "At a Calvary near the Ancre". The service marked the loss of the WWI generation, whose last members died earlier the same year. Bostridge performedKurt Weill's anti-warFour Walt Whitman Songs in 2014. He also has a long history with directing and performingThe Threepenny Opera.
In 2013, he performed as part of the Barbican Britten centenary festival in London, and released a new recording of the composer'sWar Requiem.[3]
Bostridge was for a time the music columnist forStandpoint magazine, the monthly publication launched in 2008 "to celebrate Western civilisation" and served on the magazine's advisory board. He has beenProspect magazine's classical columnist since 2023. He is a Youth Music Ambassador, a patron of the Music Libraries Trust and of theMacmillan Cancer Support Guards Chapel Carol Concert.
A collection of his writings on music,A Singer's Notebook, was published by Faber and Faber in September 2011. It was described by philosopherMichael Tanner, inBBC Music Magazine: "A consistently lively, learned, urbane and passionate book, once opened not likely to be closed until you have read it all."[citation needed]
His bestselling bookSchubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession was published by Faber and Faber in the UK and by Knopf in the US in January 2015. It has been published in German, Finnish, Dutch, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Swedish, Polish, Mandarin, simplified Chinese, Mandarin, French, Russian, and Spanish editions. It won theDuff Cooper Prize for non-fiction for 2015, the Prix Littéraire des Musiciens in 2018 and was named the best music book of the year in the Prix de la Critique 2017/18 (Association Professionelle de la Critique de Théâtre, Musique et Danse). It went on to win the Grand Prix France Musique des Muses in 2019.
In 2023 he sang the Evangelist role in a performance of J. S. Bach'sSt. Matthew Passion with the French ensembleLes Talens Lyriques and theChœur de chambre de Namur conducted byChristophe Rousset, and also gave concerts of Shakespeare's songs.
His bookSong and Self: A Singer’s Reflections on Music and Performance was published in 2023 by Chicago University Press in the US, Faber and Faber in the UK and C.H Beck in Germany (das Lied und das Ich); and will be published by Acantilado in Spain, Il Saggiatore in Italy and Artes in Japan.
In 1992, Bostridge married the writer and publisherLucasta Miller,[2] and they have a son and a daughter.[3] His brother is the biographer and criticMark Bostridge.
He lists his hobbies as reading, cooking, and looking at pictures.[2] He is a member of theGarrick Club.[13]
| Year | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
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| 2018 | Bostridge, Ian (22 February 2018)."God's own music".The New York Review of Books.65 (3):16–18. |
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