Edwin Crossley-Mercer
Bass-baritone
BIOGRAPHY
He studyed the clarinet and church music in Versailles then Opera in the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin, made his opera debut as Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Berlin in 2006.
In 2009 he sang in Cosi fan tutte at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence as Guglielmo. 2010 marked his Opéra National de Paris debut in Ariadne auf Naxos, where he later performed the roles of Papageno (Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte), Mephistofélès (Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust) and Guglielmo. Participation in productions of baroque operas on the stages of the Opéra d’Avignon, the Opéra National du Rhin, the Opéra Royal de Versailles, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées demonstrated the taste and subtlety of the singer in the interpretation of ancient music. He made his US debut in 2013 as Figaro at the LA Philharmonic. Leporello at the 2014 Glyndebourne Festival marked his UK debut.
Feeling confidently in the chamber genre, the singer performed with recitals in the Carnegie Hall, Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, the Moscow House of Music, the Academic Chapel of St. Petersburg. He collaborates with pianists Michel Dalberto and Jason Paul Peterson in recitals throughout France and Switzerland. His recordings include Les Motets by Charpentier (Alpha, 2007), arias and opera extracts from Amadis by Lully (Aparté, 2014, conductor Christophe Rousset), Michael Linton’s Carmina Catulli (Refinersfire, 2014; together with Peterson), ‘Mademoiselle — Première Audience: Unknown Music of Nadia Boulanger’ (Delos, 2017).
