Alastair Miles


Alastair Miles is a British operatic and concert bass who has had an international career since the late 1980s.

Biography

Education

Alastair Miles was educated at The John Lyon School, Harrow, and subsequently at St Marylebone Grammar School. He began flute lessons at the age of fourteen with the composer Albert Alan Owen, a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, who inspired him to think about a career in music. Miles studied flute at the Guildhall School of Music under Trevor Wye, Peter Lloyd and Edward Beckett. He became an orchestral player and taught at Stowe School and Chetham's School of Music before embarking on his vocal career. From 1982 to 1985 he sang as a Lay Clerk in the choir of St. Albans Cathedral under the direction of Stephen Darlington. Having studied with bass-baritone Richard Standen whilst at the Guildhall, he was prompted by English National Opera baritone Geoffrey Chard, a near-neighbour of his parents, to have lessons with Bruce Boyce. It was while he was with Boyce that he decided on a career in opera, and in 1986 won a place at the National Opera Studio.

Awards

Alastair Miles won the 1986 Decca-Kathleen Ferrier Award at Wigmore Hall and the 1987 at the Glyndebourne Festival. His recording of Mendelssohn's Elijah, in which he sang the title role, won Gramophone magazine's Best Choral Award for 1993.

Career

Alastair Miles is well known for bel canto roles and is considered an ideal Verdi bass. He has been called 'the finest bass of his generation'.

Operatic roles

Alastair Miles has sung at the Metropolitan Opera ;
Paris – Bastille ; Vienna ; Bayerische Staatsoper ; San Francisco Opera ; Amsterdam, Madrid ; Seville
; Palermo ;
Pesaro and La Scala, Milan.
He regularly appears with all the UK opera companies. Roles for Welsh National Opera
include Colline, Silva, Zaccaria, Mephistopheles, Fiesco, Talbot and Enrico. For Glyndebourne Festival Opera: Pogner, Speaker, Fiesco. For Opera North: Philip II, Zaccaria and Leporello. For English National Opera:
Colline, Harasta, Zaccaria, Silva, title role
in Boito’s Mefistofeles, Ford in Vaughan Williams’ Sir John in Love and Alfonso d'Este.
For the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden: Colline, Lord Sidney, Sparafucile, Rodolfo, Elmiro, Banquo, Brogni, Poliferno and Dom Juam de Sylva in
Donizetti’s Dom Sebastien.

Concert performance

Alastair Miles has appeared with many conductors
and orchestras including Giulini, Harnoncourt, Mazur, Muti, Chung, Rattle, Runnicles, Masur, Gergiev,
Gardiner, Norrington, Davis and Dohnanyi. Recent projects have included
performances of La Damnation de Faust, The Dream of Gerontius and
Handel’s Messiah with Davis and the LSO, Schumann’s Faustszenen with
Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Tilson-Thomas.

Recording

His numbers more than 80 recordings including Verdi's Don Carlos, the songs of Richard Strauss, and the solo CD Great Operatic Arias for Chandos. He works with Opera Rara to bring neglected nineteenth century Italian and French Opera to a wider public. On that label he has recorded Ambroise Thomas’ opera comique, La Cour de Célimène.