Iestyn Davies is one of the most distinguished countertenors to emerge in the past two decades
and has delighted audiences on both sides of the Atlantic with his portrayals of Baroque heroes (mainly in Monteverdi and Handel operas), as well as delivering pioneering portrayals in works by some of the most important British composers of our day, such as Thomas Adès, George Benjamin and Nico Mulhy. He is also the first countertenor to sing in a straight play – Farinelli and the King – at the West End and Broadway.

Amazingly enough, when he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2011, he was also the first British countertenor to appear in the theatre’s then 131 year history. And this despite the fact that, as an important local critic remarked at the time, Britain is known for its distinguished line of countertenors, culminating with James Bowman, by whose recent death Davies was deeply saddened and upset.

‘James was always at hand to offer advice, whether useful or just plain realistic! When I first met him, for a lesson, his main topic of conversation was to warn me of the pitfalls of a career in singing. “If you get ill that’s your mortgage unpaid for the month!” In other words, think hard about whether this is a career you can cope with.

Davies sings Handel’s Solomon with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (photo: Stöss)

‘Some years later, I also went to him when conflicted about a job offer to sing Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus; it was a lot of money but I wasn’t really sure it was something I could actually sing or wanted to. He said “you’re considered a ‘serious singer’. I spent my whole career stepping onto stages and attempting to convince the public I was a serious voice type; just be careful you don’t make it into a circus act of sorts.”

‘And with that great mantle of responsibility looming over me I wisely turned the offer down. He was, however, nothing but unserious himself. That was his gift– to charm the room either through his singing and artistry or by humour. To be able to make people laugh you need to understand and have a feel for timing, sensitivity, nuance and who the audience is you are in front of; the very skills that a singer such as James needed to move people to tears. He did both in equal measure and will be sorely missed.’

Our meeting took place before Davies was due to begin rehearsals for Mozart’s Mitridate, Re di Ponto, at Garsington Opera, in which he will sing Farnace, one of the most beautiful roles in the countertenor repertoire. As Mitridate, composed when Mozart was fourteen, is his only opera which contains a castrato part (along with the even earlier Apollo et Hyacinthus, composed at the age of twelve), Farnace is Davies’s first Mozart role, and he was immensely excited at the prospect.

He had already begun to think about the character, of whom he feels ‘very sorry, because of the burden of inheritance he carries on his shoulders. It makes you think of Prince William and Prince Harry in a way. It is all about the ties of blood and sense of duty – fidelity and what real love is, away from the pretence of valour. Every character in this opera plays a version of loyalty as they see it. I think it lends itself to a variety of stagings and the point is to see what those obscure characters from history mean to us today, what they say about jealousy, ambition and all those facets of human nature. The two rival princes, Farnace and Sifare, used to be sung by two castrati and I wonder whether the virility of these men can be communicated with this very high voice. I can’t make up my mind about how this was viewed at the time … because by the end of Handel’s life, the fashion for castrati was dying out and, based on what I’ve read, Mozart was quite frustrated at having to include them in this opera.’

Playing Farnace in Mitridate at Garsington this summer will be Davies’ first Mozart role (photo: James Beddoe)

Handel, of course, is a composer who gave the countertenor some superlative roles to sing, and Davies has performed several, with great distinction: Bertarido and Unulfo in Rodelinda (ENO & The Met), the title role in Rinaldo (Glyndebourne), Ottone in Agrippina (The Met, Munich, ROH), Armindo (ENO), as well as some of the most famous oratorios such as The Messiah, Jephtha, and Samson.

Davies’s baroque repertoire also includes Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, which he first sang in Zurich in 2005, Glyndebourne in 2008 and recently at Versailles, and which brings us back almost to the birth of opera. Monteverdi is generally thought of as the ‘father of opera’, coming immediately after Giacopo Peri, who invented the art form in 1597 with Dafne and, four years later, with Eurydice. So, is this opera, composed in 1643, well written for the voice or is there a sense of someone still experimenting?

‘No, not all all! Monteverdi is much more advanced dramatically than a lot of 17th century baroque composers. The composer was setting the text to the way people were declaiming at that time and there is a lot to be learnt from that. Every time I come back to the role of Ottone I discover something new in terms of how to sing it. It was such fun to do it at Versailles, where the formalities of that period just seem easier to understand.’

Davies was born into music, so to speak, in 1979 in York. His Welsh father, to whom he is still very close, was a cellist and founder of the Fitzwilliam String Quartet. When Iestyn was crawling around the house his father would be practising for hours and then disappear for another few hours to rehearse with
the quartet.

So was he a happy child? ‘Yes, I think I was. At least until my mother switched off the TV and when the doorbell rang and it was time for my piano lesson!’

One of the first bits of classical music that engaged him and in particular made him aware of singing was Handel’s Wheree’er you walk sung by Aled Jones as a treble. ‘I learned everything at the age of 6 from his albums! I was a chorister at St John’s Cambridge from 8 until I was 13.’

Following a run of performances, Davies says ‘It’s good to have time to look around and remember who you are, away from the characters’ (photo: Chris Sorensen)

Between school and university he spent a year in the choir of Wells Cathedral. His voice broke relatively late, at the age of fifteen, and he started singing first as a tenor, and then the bass line, but found himself getting bored. He can actually put his finger on the exact moment he started singing as a countertenor. ‘It was in 1997. I was singing bass in the school choir and during a rehearsal I began to sing along with the female alto section. The sensation, the resonance it created, something about it made more sense to me and felt good. By chance the colleague next to me said quietly “That sounds ok, y’know, maybe you should take it seriously and sing to someone.” I don’t think I would have had the guts to do anything about it had he not said that; I was not one of those people who had an obsession with countertenor repertoire so I’m enormously grateful that this happened.’

After Wells, he went to Cambridge University and studied Archaeology and Anthropology. Even though he sang as a choral scholar at St John’s College at the time, he went on trips that involved ‘digging up the past in the Caribbean. The highlight was a 3-week survey of the first-ever British sugar plantation from the early 17th century on the island of St Kitt’s.’ After Cambridge he took the postgraduate diploma at the Royal Academy of Music, studying with the same teacher, David Lowe, who had also taught Allan Clayton as well as several notable countertenors.

He acknowledges how uncertain is the move from graduation to a career. ‘It is very difficult to break into the profession and get yourself known if you’re not the sort of person who wants to throw yourself into auditions and competitions. But you have to take that leap and be prepared to be judged, or at least criticized, in a way. So I entered the London Handel Competition, won Second Prize and the Audience Prize. And the next day, I signed with Van Walsum management. This meant I could break free from what I was doing, which was singing in choirs such as the Monteverdi Choir, develop my artistry further whilst finishing at the RAM and pursue work as a soloist in opera.’

Having acquired an agent he was sent to audition at Zurich Opera. On arrival they announced that as they were doing L’incoronazione di Poppea and the countertenor singing Ottone was not singing the last three performances, might he be able to step in? All he would have to do is send a demo CD to Nicolaus Harnoncourt. ‘I realised that – having a single rehearsal and jumping onstage – is common practice in theatres in the German speaking world! This was a Jürgen Flimm production with a revolving set containing eight rooms, and I had only a piano rehearsal on the night before! But I felt like this was going to be my big break and in a way it was. Vesselina Kasarova was also in the cast and the Nero was a youthful tenor who sang incredibly well. His name was Jonas Kaufmann. I remember watching him and thinking he had a great future!’

Davies shaped his own future career with utmost care, seriousness and artistic curiosity. He made his debuts at La Scala as Apollo in Britten’s Death in Venice. One of his most remarkable features as an artist is the fact that he is as just as comfortable in the company of contemporary operas, as he is of Baroque works. He sang Francisco de Avila in Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel (In Salzburg, Covent Garden and the Met from 2016-2018), and The Boy in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, both at Covent Garden, as well as Terry Rutland in Nico Muhly’s Marnie at the Met in 2018 and relished developing the characters with living composers at hand to offer guidance, voice their views and clarify points that might arise.

So, what is the experience of working with a living composer like? ‘It can be terrifying as well as liberating. Every composer has a different approach. Tom Adès, who is a friend, obviously knows what he wants, yet is not possessive about his music. You can tell him, “look I’m having difficulty singing this the way it’s written” and he’ll say “I want it sung this way because it means you are mad or something and you can adjust your singing accordingly, provided you convey this.” Nico Muhly is not possessive, either, and very helpful to singers. He is all about, “how would you like to sing it?” George Benjamin, on the other hand, is very possessive of his music, but in the best way. The craft he puts in it is such that he says “I want those triplets done exactly as I wrote them because they make you sound sarcastic.” And I respect that. Pushing yourself in a way that you wouldn’t if the composer were willing to adjust things to make it more comfortable for you, can be very enriching. And that’s what I like about George’s music. It pushes you. It’s quite hard to memorize, but once you do, it’s very enjoyable to sing. It sounds exactly as it was meant to and it’s such a joy when a composer can makes this happen.

Davies as Francisco de Ávila in Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel at the Royal Opera House (photo: Clive Barda)

‘So they’re all very different. But having worked with living composers makes me think what a shame it is that Handel and Mozart are not around to tell us what they want. This makes me go back to both of them with a fresh eye and wonder what did those composers really want? There is a reason why they wrote this music to accompany specific words and one should try to figure this out when singing Handel in particular. Mozart’s music, on the other hand, is written in such a way that you can be in no doubt about what he wants, but the challenge is to bring fresh interpretation to it.’

As he was about to start rehearsals for Mitridate, he reflected that ‘the thing I’ve learnt about opera is that you spend six weeks rehearsing and performing with people, and develop a sense of being part of a family, of being onstage with colleagues and looking out for each other. You’re together for all of this time, and then suddenly between performances everyone is off doing their own thing. There’s no sense of continuation. It’s totally different from being in a daily run of a straight play.’

Davies knows exactly what he is talking about as he is one of the very rare opera singers to have had the chance of doing just that when he played the role of the famous castrato in Farinelli and the King alongside Mark Rylance, originally at the Globe Theatre in 2015, then at the West End and finally on Broadway in 2017. ‘Being able to do a show on Broadway for four months was terrific. We knew every inch of that theatre, we knew all the backstage staff and all the front House staff and had become a family.’

The project came about through the playwright and composer Claire van Kampen, (also Mark Rylance’s wife) who had been toying with the story for some time, and encouraged by Dominic Dromgoole, head of the Globe to finish it for production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. ‘She heard me several times on the radio and my voice seemed to strike a chord with her. So she got in touch and asked if I’d like to be part of it. My initial reaction was to turn it down. I didn’t quite understand the concept or the importance of the singer in the play. Then I got a follow up call from Claire – she was insistent it was me who should sing it.’

Was it painful to come to the end of the run of this smash hit, and part from the nightly dose of adrenalin and the family atmosphere he described?

‘Not entirely! I did 156 performances and by the end it felt very demanding vocally. I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol for the duration, trained three times a week at the gym and generally lived like a monk! I wasn’t amplified and it was a very dry theatre. I committed myself to six of eight shows a week – actors who do that as a matter of course are amazing. There was not enough time to freshen up in between and get back to 100% energy. I was constantly operating on 70-75% . But I really missed the camaraderie and the feel of real acting.

‘With opera it’s not the same, because we don’t get to do so many shows.The last thing I want to do after finishing a run is to go straight into another project. It’s good to have time to look around and remember who you are, away from the characters. Realise that I have a life outside the theatre and, while enjoying the glory of it all, come back to reality.’

Reality, away from the stage, is peaceful. ‘I try not to be lazy – when I can I enjoy exercising, hard as it is to maintain some regularity to it.’ What he does love is cooking, ‘It slows my mind. Generally I’m very impatient and get bored quite quickly. I have to train myself to let go. When cooking I’m still in control but it calms me down.’ Other interests include historic architecture and he is delighted at having just been made President of the York Georgian Society, which tries to spread and maintain interest in York’s Georgian period. He is also an ambassador for The Landmark Trust. ‘So that side of my life is quite enriching.’

Is it difficult to combine a successful singing career with a satisfying personal life? ‘It can be, yes. My partner is the American soprano Liv Redpath. She just sang Ophélie in Hamlet at Komische Oper in Berlin and will sing Titania at Glyndebourne this summer, while I’ll be at Garsington. So, whilst we’ve got into the habit of following each other around, it’s good that we’re both working in England at the same time at last!’

This interview originally appeared in the June 2023 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today