Born in Blaenau Gwent (Wales, United Kingdom) in 1943, he enjoys a great international reputation as an opera tenor thanks to his long and distinguished career, which has given him extensive experience in all fields, both in concert and in lieder, and in opera repertoire, in which he remains active.
In 1969, Sir Georg Solti engaged him to debut at Covent Garden as Hylas in Berlioz’s “Les Trojans”, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. His first important role was in 1970 as Don Ottavio in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”. Since then, he has performed numerous roles at the Royal Opera House, including Ferrando in Mozart’s “Così fan Tutte”, Nemorino in “The Elixir of Love” and Ernesto in Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”, Fenton in Verdi’s “Falstaff”, Lysander in Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Aeneas in Massanet’s “Esclarmonde”, and Almaviva in “The Barber of Seville”. In almost all of these productions at the Royal Opera House, he shared the stage with his compatriot Sir Geraint Evans.
Since the early 1970s, he has performed extensively in venues and on tours in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, and Israel, among others. He has also given concerts with leading orchestras, including the BBC, London, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Boston Symphony Orchestras, the English Chamber Orchestra, the London and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the RAI Milan Radio Orchestra, and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome.
He has also sung and recorded with many prestigious conductors such as Sir John Prichard, Bernard Hatink, Raymond Leppard, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Charles Mackerras, Daniel Baremboim, Sir Georg Solti, Richard Bonynge, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, Nello Santi, Karl Bohm, Kyril Kondrashin, Lovro von Mattachic, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jesús López Cobos, Silvio Varviso, Dennis Russell Davis, James Levine, Serge Bordeaux, Sir Simon Rattle, Mistislav Rostropovich, Eugene Ormandy, Erich Leinsdorf and Carlo Maria Giulini.
In addition to a brilliant artistic career, he began an intense teaching activity more than twenty years ago. He is currently a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, teaches in his private studio in Claygate (Surrey), and, since 2014, has been a professor of the Voice Chair “Alfredo Kraus” Fundación Ramón Areces at the Reina Sofía School of Music, where he had previously taught masterclasses.