Michael Chance

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Michael Chance
Chance singing Ganesha in Somtow's opera Ayodhya
Background information
Born (1955-03-07) 7 March 1955 (age 69)
Penn, Buckinghamshire, U.K.
GenresClassical

Michael Chance CBE (born in Penn, Buckinghamshire, 7 March 1955) is an English countertenor and the founder and Artistic Director of The Grange Festival.

Chance was born in Penn, Buckinghamshire, into a musical family. After growing up as a chorister at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, attending the St George's School, he went on to Eton and later King's College, Cambridge.[1]

His first operatic appearance was in the

Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, La Scala Milan, Florence, New York, Lisbon, Oviedo, Leipzig, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and with Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, and English National Opera
.

His roles include the title roles of Orfeo (

Bayerische Staatsoper
in Munich.

His appearances in oratorio and recital have taken him to concert halls all over the world including

Berlin's Philharmonie. He has given recitals in Frankfurt, Vienna, Amsterdam, Israel, New York and London's Wigmore Hall with a variety of programmes, ranging from Elizabethan lute songs to new works commissioned for him. He sings regularly with the viol consort Fretwork
and has toured with them to Japan and the United States.

Michael Chance's list of recordings is numerous and widespread. He received a

Vivaldi with Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert.[2]

He took part in the project of Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir to record the complete vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

His belief in extending the counter-tenor repertoire has prompted new work to be composed for him by Richard Rodney Bennett, Alexander Goehr, Tan Dun, Anthony Powers, John Tavener, and Elvis Costello - amongst others.

His television appearances include

South Bank Show
.

He was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.[3][4]

It was announced in October 2015 that Michael Chance would become the first Artistic Director of The Grange Festival, a new opera company established to continue performances at The Grange theatre in Hampshire. Opening in June 2017 with operas by Monteverdi, Mozart, Bizet and Britten, The Grange Festival is one of the few opera companies in the world to be led by an internationally renowned opera singer.[5]

Footnotes

  1. ^ ‘CHANCE, Michael Edward Ferguson’ in Who's Who 2012 (London: A. & C. Black, 2012); online edition (subscription site) by Oxford University Press, December 2011, accessed 22 April 2012
  2. ^ "Biography Michael Chance Countertenor". michaelchancecountertenor.co.uk.
  3. ^ "No. 58929". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2008. p. 7.
  4. ^ "BBC News New Year Honours list" (PDF).
  5. ^ "Grange Festival announces programme for its inaugural 2017 season". Hampshire Chronicle. Retrieved 20 April 2016.

External links

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