This week’s #RAArtistinFocus is baritone Ben McAteer! Versatile in character and with a remarkable vocal range, his current highlights include Pangloss in Candide with Marin Alsop in a new production by Lydia Steier at Theater an der Wien. He previously performed the role in the work’s Chinese premiere with the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra and with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.
With his great comedic timing, Ben McAteer is a natural performer of Gilbert & Sullivan, with recent appearances as Lord Mountararat in Iolanthe with English National Opera, and as Grand Inquisitor in The Gondoliers and King Paramount in Utopia Limited for Scottish Opera and for the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival. Watch him in The Gondoliers here (43.22): https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0016l0h/gilbert-and-sullivans-the-gondoliers
On the concert platform, Ben McAteer recently returned to the Hamburger Symphoniker for Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri. You can watch him perform the Brahms Requiem with Ireland’s National Symphony Orchestra here.
Ben McAteer has also sung for Wexford Opera Festival, Irish National Opera, NI Opera, Opera Holland Park and Welsh National Opera, in repertoire including Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse and Malatesta, both Count and title role in Figaro, and Falke and Eisenstein in Fledermaus, Papageno, Sharpless and Goryanchikov in From the House of the Dead. Watch him perform the role of Frank-Fritz in Die tote Stadt with RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra here.
Ben McAteer’s discography includes a CD of undiscovered songs by Irish composer Ina Boyle with Iain Burnside, released on Delphian Records in August 2021. Most recently in 2023 he featured on EM Records Maltworms and Milkmaids: Warlock and the Orchestra with the BBC Concert Orchestra and David Hill, containing all of Peter Warlock's music which involves the use of an orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
