Originally encouraged by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears to abandon nuclear engineering in favour of a musical career, Justin Lavender has since appeared as soloist with many of the world’s great opera companies, conductors and orchestras. His distinguished débuts include The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Arnold Guillaume Tell, the Vienna State Opera as Tamino Die Zauberflöte, La Scala, Milan, in the title role Le Comte Ory and Sydney Opera house as Nadir The Pearl Fishers.
Since then, he has sung: title role Faust, Almaviva Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and the title roles Mitridate Mosè in Egitto and Faust for the Royal Opera House; Belmonte Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Vienna and Berlin State Operas and La Monnaie; Tom Rakewell The Rake’s Progress in Modena, Reggio Emilia, Piacenza, Ferrara and Ravenna; Roméo Roméo et Juliette in Cleveland and El Paso, Texas; Duke Rigoletto under the direction of Richard Bonynge for Florida Grand Opera and for the Opéra de Lausanne; Pierre Bezuhov War and Peace at the Spoleto Festival; title role La Damnation de Faust for Finnish National Opera, in Paris, Giessen, Bordeaux, Biarritz, Erfurt, with the Taiwan National Symphony, and at the Leeds Festival; Baron Hugo in Spohr’s Faust in Cologne; Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon in New Zealand; Ferrando Così fan tutte opening the new season for the Teatro La Fenice; Maurizio Adriana Lecouvreur Erfurt; Don José Carmen in Malaysia and at RAH; Madama Butterfly and Cavalleria Rusticana in Taipei; Don Ruiz Maria Padilla at the Buxton Festival; Dallapiccola’s Ulisse in Salzburg; Nadir at ENO; Lucia di Lammermoor for the Opéra du Rhin.
His concert career is equally distinguished. He made his BBC Prom début singing the tenor lead in Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers, now issued on CD. He is particularly well known for his interpretations of Verdi’s Requiem, which he sang at the tercentenary celebrations in St Paul’s Cathedral, and of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, which he has performed with Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia. He has also performed Liszt’s Faust Symphony with Mark Elder and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London and Frankfurt, Britten’s Spring Symphony in Tokyo, televised performances of the Stabat Mater with the NHK Symphony under Charles Dutoit, Schnittke’s Faust Cantata with Abbado and the Wiener Symphoniker and with Slatkin and the BBC Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta with the Royal Scottish NSO, Mahler’s 8th Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall, oratorios by Rossini, Bach and Mozart for the Jerusalem Symphony, Royal Choral Society’s Easter Messiah and St. Matthew Passion in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.
Additional recordings include CD of Schnittke’s Faust Cantata with the Hamburg Symphony Handel’s Messiah, Arturo in Bellini’s I Puritani with Edita Gruberova, Admetus in Gluck’s Alceste, Pierre in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Rossini and Donizetti arias with the Bournemouth Symphony, three Benjamin Britten song cycles with the pianist Julian Milford, and Mozart operatic arias with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. Justin appears as Calaf in Turandot in the Alan Parker film The Life of David Gale, starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslett and Nicholas Cage.
Recent engagements include: his début with Welsh National Opera as Don José, The Dream of Gerontius in the National Concert Hall Dublin, on the centenary of Elgar’s birth, Britten’s War Requiem,Franz Schmidt’s oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, Florestan in Beethoven’s Leonore (the original version of Fidelio) with the Chelsea Opera Group, Loge in Das Rheingold for the Latvian National Opera and at the Bergen Festival in Norway, in a production to be filmed next year. He has recently recorded The Dream of Gerontius with Sakari Oramo and the CBSO, and sung the same work live in the Berlin Festival, The Dream of Gerontius with the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Colchester and in Truro Cathedral, Verdi Requiem with CUMS, Dvorak Stabat Mater in Canterbury Cathedral, St. Matthew Passion in Ripon Cathedral, Carmen with the RTE in Dublin, a recording of Janacek’s Otcenas with St. John’s College, Cambridge c. Andrew Nethsingha.
Current season/future plans: Loge Das Rheingold in concert in Oxford, Verdi Requiem in Snape Maltings, Missa Solemnis in the City Halls Glasgow, The Dream of Gerontius in Milton Keynes, The Kingdom in the Cambridge Music Festival.