Internationally acclaimed tenor Stuart Skelton joins CCM's faculty

UC College-Conservatory of Music Dean Stanley E. Romanstein has announced the addition of renowned tenor Stuart Skelton to the college’s roster of distinguished performing and media arts faculty members. Internationally acclaimed for his outstanding musicianship, tonal beauty and intensely dramatic portrayals, Skelton's new appointment as Professor of Voice at CCM begins on Aug. 15, 2021.

One of the finest heldentenors on the stage today, Skelton maintains a vibrant international performance career. His repertoire encompasses many of opera’s most challenging roles, from Wagner's Parsifal, Tristan, Lohengrin, Erik and Siegmund to Beethoven’s Florestan and Saint-Saëns’ Samson to Britten’s Peter Grimes.

Closely associated with Peter Grimes, Skelton has sung the title role at English National Opera, Opera Australia, Opera de Oviedo and Tokyo’s New National Theatre, as well as in concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski, with David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, and with Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh Festival.

Other recent performance highlights include a debut at Teatro alla Scala in Beethoven’s Fidelio conducted by Myung-Whun Chung in a production directed by Deborah Warner, new productions of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, both conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, and at English National Opera under the baton of Edward Gardner, Lohengrin at the Opéra national de Paris led by Philippe Jordan, Parsifal at the Opernhaus Zürich conducted by Daniele Gatti, Samson et Dalila at the Ópera National de Bordeaux, and Wozzeck for a Metropolitan Opera debut conducted by James Levine. On the concert stage, Skelton has made great music together with Jaap van Zweden and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen and The MET Orchestra, Simone Young and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sir Antonio Pappano and Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra, and Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Skelton’s first solo album, Shining Knight, presents a program of Wagner, Griffes and Barber accompanied by Asher Fisch and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, which seamlessly showcases both heroic vocalism and musical sensitivity. His expansive discography also includes the Helpmann Award-winning Tristan und Isolde with Asher Fisch and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder and a Grammy Award-nominated Janáček Glagolitic Mass with Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, a Gramophone Magazine award-winning recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex with Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and multiple recordings of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, with Sir Simon Rattle and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, with Ádám Fischer and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He contributes to four recordings of Wagner’s Ring Cycle: with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra led by Jaap van Zweden, with the Philharmoniker Hamburg and Simone Young, and with Seattle Opera and the State Opera of South Australia both under the baton of Asher Fisch.

A 1995 graduate of CCM's Master of Music in Voice program, Skelton has previously returned to his alma mater to conduct master classes. He received CCM’s Distinguished Alumni Award earlier this spring in recognition of his outstanding achievements and ongoing engagement with the college.

“I am delighted to welcome an alum of Stuart Skelton’s professional stature back to the CCM family,” said Romanstein. “Stuart’s expertise as both an active international performing artist and an accomplished educator will help us continue to prepare future generations of students for positions on the world stage. I want to recognize the excellent work of our search committee chaired by Karen Lykes, which included Marie-France Lefebvre, Aik Khai Pung, Gwendolyn Coleman, Amy Johnson, Quinn Ankrum, Kenneth Shaw, Thomas Baresel and Daniel Weeks.”

"I am beyond honoured to be returning to CCM," said Skelton. "My deepest thanks to the dean, faculty and students of CCM for welcoming me into the family once again. I am very excited to be able to continue my performing career alongside my teaching responsibilities, and I firmly believe that being able to maintain my performance calendar and my teaching will enable me to bring the immediacy of performance and integrate that with my students at CCM. This will allow the best practises in teaching, facilities and performance – which have always been the hallmark of CCM – to be integrated into the preparation for leaving the nest and getting the craft, the art and the joy of singing onto the stage. I have no doubt that whatever I am able to bring to the students of CCM, they will have untold riches to share with me, and I know that they will make me a better teacher and a better singer.” 

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Featured image at top: Portrait of Stuart Skelton. Photo/Guðmundur Ingólfsson