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Justin Lavender was originally persuaded by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten
to abandon nuclear engineering for music. He made his international debut
in The Pearl Fishers at the Sydney Opera House. This success led
to engagements with many of the world’s great opera companies and orchestras.
In 1990 he made debuts at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, singing the leading
role of Arnold in Rossini’s spectacular masterpiece William Tell,
and at the Vienna State Opera as Tamino in Mozart’s Magic Flute.
His debut at La Scala, Milan, in the title role of Rossini’s Count
Ory came the following year.
Having just sung Maurizio in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur at
the new opera house in Erfurt he recently returned to Covent Garden for the
title role in Gounod’s Faust. Later the same season
he sang Florestan in Beethoven’s Leonore with the Chelsea
Opera Group at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. In 2007 he sang Don José in Carmen with
Welsh National Opera. He has also now moved into Wagnerian repertoire
singing Loge in Das Rheingold for the Latvian National Opera and
at the Bergen Festival in Norway.
He has worked on the concert platform with conductors such as Solti, Giulini,
Haitink, Oramo, Slatkin, Rhozhdestvensky, Dutoit, Frühbeck de Burgos,
Elder and Abbado, and is particularly associated with oratorios such as Elgar’s Dream
of Gerontius, Verdi’s Requiem , Mahler’s 8th Symphony and
Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (Book of Seven Seals).
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