Brindley Sherratt

Bass Brindley Sherratt has performed a variety of roles, from Handel to Adams, on stage and recordings. During the later part of his career, he has performed increasingly often outside Britain. Sherratt was born in 1965 in Britain's Lancashire region. Several members of his family were strong singers. He attended the Royal Academy of Music, beginning as a trumpeter but switching to voice along the way, and he graduated in 1985 with a voice degree as a bass-baritone. He earned the Mario Grisi, Robert Radford, and Gilbert Betjamin Prizes for operatic and vocal recital performances. Sherratt soon made his debut with the Welsh National Opera as Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni and went on to appear at the Grange Park Opera as Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and as Colline in Puccini's La bohème and as the Sprecher in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Wexford International Opera Festival, among other British venues. He made his recording debut in 2002 on a recording of a pair of Haydn masses with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. The first in a long series of operatic recordings by Sherratt came in 2003 on the Opera Rara label with Il Salotto, Vol. 6: La Partenza. Sherratt has made multiple appearances at many major English venues, including the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and the BBC Proms. He has often been heard at festivals as a recitalist, and his orchestral credits include appearances with the Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Andrew Davis, the Hallé Orchestra under Mark Elder, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. As his career developed, he was increasingly often been heard abroad, with appearances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (as Sarastro in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, a role he has performed more than 100 times), the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (in Wagner's Die Walküre), and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Louis Langrée. As a recitalist, Sherratt has often worked with pianist Julius Drake, and the pair released the album Fear No More on the Delphian label in 2024. By that time, his recording catalog comprised more than 25 albums, with repertory ranging from Handel operas to John Adams' Doctor Atomic, in which he appeared on a 2018 BBC Symphony Orchestra recording. Sherratt serves as a visiting professor at his alma mater, the Royal Academy of Music. ~ James Manheim