Introducing British Bass-Barihunk Bradley Travis

Bradley Travis

British bass-barihunk Bradley Travis was introduced to us via Twitter. He's just wrapped up a run performing the roles of the German Father, a youth and the Priest in St. Mark's in Britten's Death in Venice at Garsington Opera.

Upcoming performances include Lesbus in Handel's Agrippina at Iford Opera from July 29-August 5, the Fireman in Voseček's Biedermann and the Arsonists at the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler's Wells and Masetto in Mozart's Don Giovanni with English Touring Opera next Spring. 

He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music where he was the Drapers’ de Turckheim Scholar, winner of the Alexander Young Award and a finalist in the Frederic Cox Award.  He recently graduated from the Royal College of Music International Opera School where he won the Eric Joseph Shilling Award for Opera. He also received a Sir Gordon Palmer Scholarship supported by the South Square Trust Award.

He has performed Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with Opera North, as well as a number of roles at the Royal College of Music International Opera School, including Don Iñigo Gomez in Ravel's L’heure espagnole, Lord Ellington Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne and Ottone in Monteverdi's L’incoronazione di Poppea.  He recently completed a recording with Simon Lepper of Ancel Newton’s song cycle Doomed Youth.

 
Most recently he received the Garsington Opera's Helen Clarke Award in recognition of his contribution and musical skill during their 2014 season.

Jonathan McGovern goes from Avatar Jake to King Ulysses

We somehow lost track of Jonathan McGovern after his critically-acclaimed performances as the avatar Jake in Nico Muhly's Two Boys at the English National Opera in 2011. At the time, he had just taken 2nd Prize at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and was joining the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.

He recently caught our attention again as Ulysses at the Iford Opera Festival production of Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses. Rian Evan said his "burnished baritone embraces both the heroism of Ulysses and the emotional torture of this culminating episode of his odyssey." It's amazing to think that this is the same guy who played the baby faced boy n Two Boys. He next takes on Sid in Puccini's La fanciulla del West at ENO in October and then sings the role of the captain in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at Grand Théâtre de Genève with fellow barihunk Michael Nagy as Onegin.

Behind the scenes with Jonathan McGovern and Louise Alder:

Other engagements this season have included Polynices in Julian Anderson’s world premiere The Thebans at ENO, the role of Adam in a staged version of Haydn’s The Creation for Vocal Futures at the Ambika P3 in London, the St John Passion with Winchester Music Club, and a recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Le Reniement de Saint Pierre where he sang the role of Jesus.