William Dazeley

William Dazeley is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge. He studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he received several notable prizes including the prestigious Gold Medal, the Decca/Kathleen Ferrier Prize and the Richard Tauber Prize and won such competitions as the Royal Overseas League Singing Competition and the Walther Grüner International Lieder Competition.

William has appeared in many of the world’s opera houses,  where roles have included Count Cherubin, Marcello La Bohème, Guglielmo Così fan tutte, Anthony Sweeney Todd, Yeletsky Queen of Spades, Mercutio Romeo et Juliette and Figaro Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Papageno The Magic Flute (English National Opera), Alfonso Così fan tutte, Yeletsky, title role Don Giovanni, Posa Don Carlos, Danilo The Merry Widow, Mr Gedge Albert Herring (Opera North), L’Ami The Fall of the House Usher, Count Le Nozze di Figaro (Welsh National Opera), Harasta Cunning Little Vixen, Starveling A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Glyndebourne Festival), Count Figaro, Figaro Barbiere, title role Owen Wingrave (Glyndebourne on Tour), Enrico Maria de Rohan (Buxton Festival), Figaro Barbiere (Deutsche Staatsoper,  Berlin), Count Figaro and Don Giovanni (Deutsche Oper Berlin), Dr Faust (Salzburg Festival and Théâtre du Châtelet), Scherasmin Oberon, Captain von Trapp The Sound of Music (Châtelet), Ferryman Curlew River (Opéra de Lyon and Edinburgh Festival), Count Figaro (Pittsburgh Opera), Zurga The Pearl Fishers (San Francisco Opera), Maximilian Candide (Teatro di San Carlo), title role Eugene Onegin (New Zealand Opera), The Brothers in concert with Bochumer Symphoniker, Adès’s Totentanz in Warsaw, Oedipus The Thebans in Bonn, Marcello La Bohème (Hamburg Staatsoper), Eisenstein Die Fledermaus (Bolshoi), title role The Fall of the House of Usher (Göttingen Festival), Ottokar Der Freischütz in concert with the OAE, Father Hänsel und Gretel (Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera), and Traveller Death in Venice (Garsington Opera).  

In concert he has sung the title role Szenen aus Goethes Faust with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Celebrant in Bernstein’s Mass with the Orquestra Sinfonica de Barcelona, Schumann Requiem for Mignon (Gardiner/Monteverdi Orchestra), Mahler Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Herreweghe/Royal Flanders Philharmonic and at the Casa da Musica), Corigliano Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Slatkin/BBC Symphony Orchestra), Christmas Oratorio (Berlin Philharmonic), Mahmoud The Death of Klinghoffer (BBC Symphony Orchestra), Das Paradies und die Peri (San Francisco Symphony), Das Klagende Lied (RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra), Carmina Burana (Orchestre du Capitole, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Britten War Requiem (Aspen Festival), L’Enfance du Christ (Davis/London Symphony Orchestra and Bayerische Rundfunk), Brahms Requiem (Gardiner/Monteverdi Choir) and L’Enfance du Christ (Bolton/Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg). World premières include Jesus in Birtwistle’s The Last Supper (Barenboim/Deutsche Staatsoper), later reprised at the Glyndebourne Festival, and Hosokawa’s Hanjo (Aix-en-Provence Festival and Théâtre de la Monnaie). William has also given recital performances at the Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, St George’s Bristol and at the Théâtre du Châtelet, and he is regularly invited to sing at the Cheltenham, Aix-en-Provence and Saintes Festivals with such noted accompanists as Graham Johnson and Iain Burnside.

2016/17 highlights include a return to Opera North as Faninal Der Rosenkavalier and to Glyndebourne Festival as Baron Douphol La Traviata; Soldier Simplicius Simplicissimus (Independent Opera); Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Royal Festival Hall and Fauré Requiem with Ulster Orchestra.