Bass-baritone Peter trained with the renowned Irish baritone Michael Maurel. He began his career in Hastings performing fully-staged operas with experienced professional singers and directors Michael Maurel, Fred Westcott, Geoffrey Shovelton, John Winfield, Brenda Stanley and Alistair Dawes amongst many others. His professional debut in a major role was as Mozart’s Figaro for London Opera Players, to which he quickly added Malatesta (Don Pasquale) at Holland Park, Dandini (La Cenerentola), Onegin and a number of other, largely lyric, baritone roles.
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In 2016 he was voted by clients the top performing special interests host across all disciplines. Peter has also written and delivered many concert programmes for Saga and others which has encouraged him to develop an enormous range of songs and arias and, especially, an ability to entertain in a ‘one man, one hour’ format. His Schubert invites particular praise, his Flanders & Swann is full of nuance and his unceasing search for new repertoire has gained the interest and respect of his clientele over the better part of a decade.
Over the past 25 years Peter has performed over eighty operatic bass-baritone roles, around forty oratorios, trod the boards with Pavarotti and Zancanaro at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, sung for The Opera Project, Nationale Reisopera, British Youth Opera, Festival dei Due Mondi, Opéra Nationale de Bordeaux, Kentish Opera, Opera à la Carte, the D’Oyly Carte and in locations as opposite in their demands as the cavernous Lincoln Cathedral, the Sheldonian Theatre, the bijou Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond and the 24,000-seater Kirklees Stadium in Huddersfield whilst being broadcast live to the entire of Australia!
Bass-baritone Peter has always walked the road less travelled. He was very much made in Hastings, East Sussex, where his childhood was spent very actively in local music-making. He has nourished and maintained links with his home town returning to perform many operatic roles with Opera South-East and to give recitals at Holy Trinity Church, St Clement’s and other churches around the town. Family tragedy prompted him not to continue his music studies but, instead, to complete a BA(Hons) in Theology/ Philosophy at King’s College, London.
Communication is Peter’s strength and his ease at communicating with an audience has always been remarked upon as a defining feature throughout his career. The increasing power and darkness of his voice in recent years – he has taken on performances of the eponymous heroes of Macbeth and Nabucco. These fantastic bass-baritone roles have given him an advantage on large stages or in dry acoustics and his unorthodox background makes him an asset in unusual or up-close performance situations.