Jake Arditti

Jake Arditti

Counter-tenor

Already a professional singer at the age of eleven, when he sang Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and in several productions at ENO, Jake Arditti has had a meteoric rise to fame since his prize-winning performance at the 2012 Innsbruck Baroque Singing Competition.

Career Highlights

Handel’s Rinaldo (Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow), Serse (title-role at Longborough Festival Opera), Riccardo Primo (title-role at the London Handel Festival), Sesto (Teatro Colón and Oper Halle) and Nireno (ENO) in Giulio Cesare, Narciso in Agrippina (Opera Vlaanderen), but such rarities as Emone in Traetta’s Antigone (Wiener Kammeroper), Euripilo/La Discordia/Polluce in Cavalli’s Elena (Festival d’Aix en Provence, Lille and Lisbon) and Apollo in Legrenzi’s La Divisione del Mondo with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques (Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Colmar, Nancy, Versailles and Köln).

In English Baroque repertoire he has performed the Spirit in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Cupid in Blow’s Venus and Adonis, both for Innsbruck, while the Guardian described his Othniel (Handel’s Joshua) for Opera North as “outstanding”. He most recently sung David in Handel‘s Saul (Theater an der Wien), a role debut in a new production directed by Claus Guth and conducted by Laurence Cummings.

Romantic and modern roles include Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (Wiener Kammeroper), Voice of Apollo in Death in Venice (Stuttgart), Prince Gogo in Ligeti’s Le grand macabre (Essen), and SUM‚ by Max Richter and Wayne McGregor, premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre in 2012. His extended vocal range has also seen him encompass such roles as Amore (Theater an der Wien and Zürich Opera) and Nerone (Pinchgut Opera, Sydney) in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, as well as Handel’s soprano take on Nerone in Agrippina (Theater an der Wien and Göttingen Handel Festival).

On the concert platform, Jake Arditti has displayed a similarly remarkable versatility, from Satirino in Cavalli’s La Calisto (La Nuova Musica at the Wigmore Hall), Contre-ténors (with Il Pomo d’Oro at the Festival de Sablé) and From Soul to Soul with the Pera Ensemble in Heidelberg and Cologne, to the premieres of Hilda Paredes’ Canciones Lunáticas for countertenor and string quartet (at the Edinburgh Festival and numerous other venues on both sides of the Atlantic). He also gave the premiere performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Cosa Resta with the Arditti Quartet
in Munich (Herculessaal), Paris (Festival d’Automne), London (Wigmore Hall) and at the Festival Milano Musica. Last season, he made his debut at the Musikverein in Vienna, with a solo programme dedicated entirely to Handel’s Young Lovers. Jake sang for Parnassus Arts Productions the role of Ernesto in Vinci’s Gismondo, re di Polonia (with concerts in Gliwice, Vienna
and Moscow), which will also be recorded in the summer of 2019.

Future plans include the title-role in Robert Carsen’s production of Handel’s Rinaldo for Glyndebourne, the title-role in Corselli’s Achille in Sciro conducted by Ivor Bolton and directed by Mariame Clément at the Teatro Real Madrid. He will revive the role of Nerone in Monteverdi’s
L’incoronazione di Poppea under Leonardo García Alarcón for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and sing further performances as Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare for Oper Halle.

Last updated: 28th October 2020