Andrew Staples - Tenor |
Andrew Staples sang as a chorister in St Paul’s Cathedral before accepting a Music Scholarship to Eton College. In 1998 he went up to Cambridge with a Choral Scholarship to King’s College where he gained a degree in Music. He was later a Lay Clerk in St John’s College Choir, Cambridge, where he enjoyed the opportunity to sing with and direct the Gentlemen of St John’s and the Cambridge University Chamber Choir of which he was the Associate Conductor. He currently studies with Ryland Davies as a member of the Benjamin Britten International Opera School at the Royal College of Music, where he was the inaugural Peter Pears Scholar. He is a Wingate Scholar and holds the Ian Fleming Charitable Trust Music Education Award from the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund and enjoys the generous support of the Countess of Munster Trust and the Josephine Baker Trust. Last year he won the Song prizes in the Kathleen Ferrier and the Richard Tauber singing competitions and last year was joint winner of the Cuthbert Smith Prize for solo singing at the RCM and took second prize in the Patricia Routledge Singing competition. |
Andrew’s recent engagements have included and Mozart’s C-Minor Mass with the Swedish Radio and Daniel Harding, Bruckner’s Te Deum with Haitink, a tour of Mozart’s Requiem in Japan with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, a European tour of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, singing the arias with John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi choir, Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem with the Choir of London, the US premiere of John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple at the Lincoln Center in New York, a live broadcast on Radio 3 of Leighton’s Cantata for Tenor and Choir Crucifixus, Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with Andrew Manze and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in Sweden, Elgar's The Apostles with the Royal Choral Society and the Philharmonia in Canterbury Cathedral and The Messiah in the Royal Albert Hall the Royal Festival Hall. He has given a recital of Haydn Arias with the Haydn Akademie in Schloss Esterházy. He appears frequently in concert at St Martins-in-the-fields.
Andrew has recorded the role of ‘Death’ in a world premiere recording of Walford Davies’ Oratorio Everyman with the London Oriana Choir and the Kensington Symphony Orchestra under David Drummond.
On stage he has performed the role of Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at College, with Opera East Productions and recently with British Youth Opera. Other roles include Male Chorus in Britten’s Rape of Lucretia at the Benjamin Britten International Opera School, Ferrando and Schoolmaster in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen for Opera East Productions, Aret in Haydn’s Philemon und Baucis for the 2003 Haydn Festival at Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt, Austria, conducted by Trevor Pinnock. In concert he has sung Don Ottavio in a concert performance of Don Giovanni in the Fairfield Halls with Andrew Parrott and the London Mozart Players. He appeared with Ian Page and the Classical Opera Company in scenes from Mozart and Haydn Operas at the Barbican and the Wigmore Hall.
Future performances include taking the role of Ferrando in Così fan
tutte this summer with the Classical Opera Company in Italy and on tour
in the UK. He will sing Mozart’s Requiem for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
conducted by Andrew Manze and Mozart’s C-Minor Mass with the Swedish
Radio and Daniel Harding.