David Butt Philip

Biography

British tenor David Butt Philip was born in Somerset and sang as a chorister at Peterborough Cathedral. He trained as a baritone at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. He retrained as a tenor after performing for Glyndebourne Festival in 2010, and subsequently became a Jerwood Young Artist in 2011, winning the John Christie Award and singing Rodolfo (La bohème) for Glyndebourne on Tour. Since 2014 he has sung for companies including English National Opera, Opera North, Glyndebourne, Opera Holland Park, Teatro Real, Madrid and Deutsche Oper Berlin, his repertory including Froh (Das Rheingold), Rodolfo, Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly), Luigi (Il tabarro), Laca (Jenůfa), Folco (Isabeau), the title role of Der Zwerg, Robert Devereux (Gloriana) and Hamlet and Laertes (Brett Dean’s Hamlet).
Butt Philip’s concert performances include Dream of Gerontius with Mark Elder at the Bridgewater Hall, and at Vienna Musikverein, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Britten’s War Requiem in Lisbon, Montpellier and for ENO, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied with the LPO under Vladimir Jurowski and a recital at the Wigmore Hall.
Photo: Andrew Staples