“There is amongst the cast one unequivocally great voice: that of James Creswell, the best American bass I’ve heard since Sam Ramey debuted at Glyndebourne in the late 1970s, magnificently rich, dark and wholly secure, with flawless emission – and of quite thrilling scale.” — Opera Britannia
American bass James Creswell has established himself as one of the leading basses of his generation. Born in Seattle, Washington, he graduated from Yale University, and his early career included apprenticeships with Los Angeles Opera and San Francisco Opera before he moved to Germany as a soloist with the Komische Oper Berlin.
Creswell has since built an international career spanning the Metropolitan Opera, Dutch National Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Staatsoper Berlin, Oper Frankfurt, Theater an der Wien, Opéra national de Paris, Opéra de Bordeaux, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, and the Edinburgh International Festival, among others.
His operatic work ranges across the core bass repertoire — from Wagner’s great patriarch and villain roles to Mozart, Handel, Verdi, and twentieth-century opera — and he has been a notable presence in the Wagnerian repertoire in particular, taking on roles including Gurnemanz, Hunding, King Marke, and Fasolt at major houses.
On the concert platform, his performances have included Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 for the Hallé Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder, Bach’s St John Passion with Kent Nagano and the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester, St Matthew Passion at the Cincinnati May Festival with James Conlon, Brahms’ Requiem, Verdi’s Requiem with Vasily Petrenko, Handel’s Messiah, and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time at the BBC Proms.
