Music has been at the centre of Canadian bass-baritone Robert Gleadow’s life from a young age. He began his musical training as a member of the Toronto Children’s Chorus before continuing as a vocal scholar and boy soprano at both Royal St. George’s College and St. James Cathedral in Toronto, where he was also an accomplished pianist and organist.
At just 18, he became the youngest-ever member of the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio Programme, making his main stage debut as Colline in Puccini’s La Bohème.
At the age of 21, he joined the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he sang Colline, Samuel (Un Ballo in maschera), Zaretsky (Eugene Onegin), among other roles.
A versatile singer and actor, Mr. Gleadow has enjoyed an international career spanning a wide range of repertoire. Best known as a Mozartian, he has performed Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), Leporello (Don Giovanni) and Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) on stages around the world, including the Wiener Staatsoper, Theater an der Wien, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opéra de Montréal, Canadian Opera Company, Opéra de Lausanne, Oper Köln, Palau de les Arts Valencia, Drottningholms Slottstheater, Glyndebourne Festival, Musikfest Bremen and George Enescu Festival Bucharest.
Equally at ease beyond the Mozart repertoire, Robert has enjoyed considerable success in Handel’s Belshazzar (Gobrias) at the Proms under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras; as Rocco in Fidelio in Brussels, Paris and Helsinki; as Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Canadian Opera Company and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; as Talbot in Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and the King of Egypt in Verdi’s Aida with Houston Grand Opera; as Moses in Kurt Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and as Theseus in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Canadian Opera Company.
He has worked with leading conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Mark Elder, Sir Simon Rattle, Gianandrea Noseda, Semyon Bychkov, Manfred Honeck, Philippe Jordan, Jakub Hrůša, Patrick Summers, Francois-Xavier Roth, René Jacobs, Mark Minkowski, Jérémie Rhorer, Johannes Debus, Hannu Lintu and Diego Fasolis.
Robert Gleadow can be heard and seen on numerous CDs and DVDs, most notably as Lorenzo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elīna Garanča (Deutsche Grammophon), Douglas d’Angus in La Donna del lago (Opera Rara), Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Naxos) and as Don Giovanni (Château de Versailles Spectacles).
