Guest Experts
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Petroc Trelawny discusses the performances with guests from the world of singing each night on BBC Four and BBC Two Wales.
Barbara Bonney will also chat to Huw Edwards during the Final on BBC Two. |
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Mary King: Concert 1
As a performer, mezzo-soprano Mary King's operatic roles range from Marcellina Il Nozze di Figaro to Mama/Tzippie Where the Wild Things Are by Knussen, with a particular emphasis on 20th century repertoire, working with companies such as Glyndebourne, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Garsington Festival Opera. Concert work includes Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Elias Five Songs for Irina Ratushinskaya; Meridian by Birtwistle, Spring Symphony Britten and many other contemporary pieces, working with a wide range of companies from IRCAM in Paris to the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Orchestras she has performed performed with include the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestras and London Sinfonietta under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, Yehudi Menuhin, Pinchas Zuckerman and Walter Weller. Her community project roles include Mrs Lovett Sweeney Todd; Miss Adelaide Guys and Dolls and Mrs Peachum Threepenny Opera.
She is Artistic Director of The Knack, a course for singers run by ENO's Baylis Programme. Earlier this year, to considerable critical acclaim, Mary King appeared in Operatunity on Channel 4 television.
Recently she gave a performance of Pierrot Lunaire with the London Sinfonietta in Nicosia, Cyprus. Future engagements include concerts in Cologne to be broadcast by WDR, a return to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and a series of concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic.
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Wasfi Kani: Concert 2
Born in 1956 in London, Wasfi played the violin in the National Youth Orchestra and read music at Oxford. She then spent 10 years in the City, programming and designing financial computer systems.
While working in the City, Wasfi studied conducting with Sian Edwards, and in 1986 started a small computer consultancy which gave her the flexibility to spend more time conducting. She continued consultancy until she made music her full-time career in 1993.
In 1989 Wasfi founded the small-scale touring company Pimlico Opera, staging productions in unusual places: banks, hospitals, country houses and, most notoriously, prisons. First came The Marriage of Figaro in Wormwood Scrubs, then followed the first of many prison collaborations, Sweeney Todd in 1991 the inspiration for the BBC's recent TV film Tomorrow La Scala, using D-wing lifers. Pimlico Opera has since worked in Wandsworth, Bullingdon, Downview, Mountjoy and Winchester prisons.
Critical acclaim continued with the British premiere of Shostakovich's Cheryomushki, nominated for an Evening Standard Award.
In 1992, whilst continuing to run Pimlico, Wasfi was made Chief Executive of Garsington Opera. During her five years there, she gained a reputation as a formidable fundraiser, entrepreneur and administrator. She left to create her own rural opera festival at Grange Park in Hampshire, for which she is Chief Executive.
By the third festival, Grange Park Opera was receiving great critical acclaim with performances of Rinaldo, Eugene Onegin and The Mikado. Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe opens the 2003 festival, followed by Simon Callow directing Chabrier's Le Roi Malgré Lui, and La Bohème.
Wasfi received an OBE for services to music in 2002.
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Anthony Rolfe Johnson: Concert 3
One of this country's most distinguished tenors, Anthony Rolfe Johnson's schedule includes concerts with the major orchestras in this country and in the world's leading musical centres. He has sung with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Solti, the Boston Symphony under Ozawa, the New York Philharmonic under Rostropovitch and Masur, the Cleveland Orchestra under Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic under Levine. He has also worked with Giulini, Harnoncourt, Rozhdestvensky, Eliot Gardiner, Mackerras, Tennstedt, Boulez, Haitink and Abbado.
He has a vast range of recordings to his name, reflecting his worldwide reputation as an interpreter of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Britten. He has been acclaimed for his recordings of the great Handel oratorios, the Evangelist in both the St John and St. Matthew Passions, and many award winning recordings including Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten and Die Schöpfung, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito, and Britten's War Requiem. He has recently recorded the title roles in Oedipus Rex, Samson and Peter Grimes; Tom Rakewell The Rake's Progress, Florestan Fidelio and Captain Vere Billy Budd.
He made his operatic debut at Glyndebourne and has since sung in the world's great opera houses. Roles include Don Ottavio, Tamino, Ferrando, Belmonte, Essex Gloriana, Florestan Fidelio, Jupiter Semele, Oronte Alcina and Don Ottavio and the title roles in Monteverdi's Ulysses and Orfeo. He has sung the title role in Idomeneo at Salzburg, Vienna, Paris and the Metropolitan Opera. He has sung Aschenbach in Geneva, Edinburgh and the Met; and Peter Grimes at Savonlinna, Glyndebourne, Tokyo, Munich and at the Met. He is a regular guest at the Monnaie in Brussels and with the Netherlands Opera.
Anthony Rolfe Johnson was made a CBE in 1992.
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Gwynne Howell: Concert 4
One of the world's leading basses, Gwynne Howell, was born near Swansea. He obtained degrees from the University College of Wales and Manchester University before pursuing his vocal studies at the Royal Northern College of Music.
In 1968 Gwynne Howell joined Sadler's Wells Opera. and moved to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1972. Since then he has sung most of the major bass roles with the company.
Gwynne Howell has returned regularly as a guest to English National Opera, and has performed with Opera North, Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne.
His extensive international career in opera has taken him to the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Toronto, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Paris, Geneva and Bruxelles.
Gwynne Howell enjoys a highly successful concert career and has appeared all over the world with many leading conductors.
His many recordings include Mahler 8 with Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ballo in Maschera and Luisa Miller and Rossini's Stabat Mater with Muti, Tristan with Goodall, the Messiah with Solti, and Beethoven 9 with Kurt Masur. He has recently completed a new recording of Un ballo in maschera for Teldec.
Future engagements include a BBC Prom performance of War and Peace, A Midsummer Night's Dream at La Monnaie and the world première of The Tempest by Thomas Adès, both at Covent Garden.
In 1998 he was awarded the CBE.
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Barbara Bonney: Concert 5 & Final
Widely recognised as a superlative recital and concert artist, American lyric soprano Barbara Bonney is also a prime exponent of the Mozart and Strauss roles she has made her own in the worlds leading opera houses. She has been praised for her radiant tone and the engaging warms of her personality, as well as for her stylistic versatility in a broad repertoire that ranges from baroque to 20th century music.
Ms Bonney's artistic scope and interpretative gifts are most evident in the thoughtful programming of the Lieder recitals that serve as the cornerstone of her career: she is likely to perform less frequently-heard songs by Mendelssohn or Clara Schumann, Benjamin Britten or Zemlinsky along with more familiar works by Schubert and Wolf.
These interests are reflected as well in the more than seventy recordings she has made for major labels including London/Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Teldec, Angel/EMI and Philips.Her recording career covers a wide range, with opera recordings from Mozart to Schoenberg, American songs with André Previn (who wrote several of them for her), and Lieder by Robert and Clara Schumann.
A frequent broadcaster on radio and television, Barbara Bonney lives in London. This is her second outing to the Competition, and she will be the guest expert on Concert 5 and the Final, and will also give an Amateur masterclass in St David's Hall on Saturday 28 June.
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