David Bartleet, Tenor

& Associate Director

In early 2007 David Bartleet was invited to give Master Classes at Songskoli Demetz, the popular music college in Reykjavik. This immediately led to an appointment to teach most of the final year singing pupils and since then his reputation has spread and he has many talented pupils at all levels including many of Iceland's professional singers. In addition, he instructs a good number of the singing teachers together with regular open seminars.

BIOGRAPHY DAVID BARTLEET TENOR

David began his opera career in 1976 as a founder member of the English Music Theatre with artistic directors Stuart Bedford and Colin Graham. Since then he has developed a varied freelance career, not only as singer, but also an actor and singers’ manager.

In recent years he has become increasingly successful as a voice teacher in Britain as well as Holland and Germany. Since February 2007 he has been established as a teacher of voice and interpretation at Songskoli Demetz Reykjavik, as well as working regularly with many of Iceland's top teachers and advising many of their professional singers.

During his career he performed a great variety of opera roles at opera houses and festivals in Britain and Europe, including The Royal Opera Covent Garden, English National Opera and Scottish Opera. With the English Music Theatre he sang Blifil and the Shogun in the world premieres of Tom Jones (Stephen Oliver) and An Actor’s Revenge (Minoru Miki) together with Paco in the British premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s La Cubana. Among various appearances as an actor he spent a season with the contemporary theatre company “Lumiere and Son” and at about the same time was awarded an English Arts Council Advanced Musicians Bursary (1984) to study major opera character roles with the Norwegian tenor Ragnar Ulfung.

A graduate of Leeds University, David was awarded the prestigious ‘Opera Scholarship’ at the Royal College of Music London where his voice teacher was the Welsh baritone Redvers Llewelyn. He later won awards from the Ralph Vaughan Williams and Countess of Munster Trusts to carry out further studies at the London Opera Centre. During this time his voice teacher was the tenor Richard Lewis, while he studied repertoire with Peter Gelhorn, Norman Feasey, Tom Hammond and Anthony Legge.