Sir John Tomlinson

Born in Lancashire, Sir John Tomlinson gained a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester in 1967 before winning a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music. He has sung regularly with English National Opera since 1974 and with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden since 1977, having also appeared with all the other leading British opera companies. He sang at the Bayreuth Festival for eighteen consecutive seasons (including ten seasons as Wotan/Wanderer in Wagner’s ‘Ring’) and has also enjoyed operatic engagements in Milan, Geneva, Bologna, Barcelona, Lisbon, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver, San Diego, Santiago (Chile), Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, Avignon, Bordeaux, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin (both the Deutsche Oper and the Deutsche Staatsoper), Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, and Bilbao, as well as at the festivals of Orange, Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg, Edinburgh, Florence (the Maggio Musicale) and Glyndebourne (where he made his debut in 1971, and 54 years later in 2025, sang Titurel in Parsifal).

Sir John has sung over 200 operatic roles, but is best known for his interpretations of the great Wagner bass and bass-baritone roles including Hans Sachs, Wotan, Hagen, Gurnemanz, The Flying Dutchman, König Marke and König Heinrich. His other roles include: Boris Godunov, Figaro, Leporello, Sarastro, Fiesco, Arkel, Balstrode, Kingfisher, Mephistofeles, Zaccharia, Claggart, Bluebeard, Baron Ochs, Rocco, Golaud, Moses, Philip II, Attila, Oberto, The Green Knight, Minotaur, Borromeo, Tiresias, Varlaam, Thomas Becket, Ivan Susanin. John Tomlinson was awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2005.