Ian Bostridge Interviewed by Suzi Feay

International award-winning classical singer and author Ian Bostridge reflects on the back stories of some of the many works he has sung and what it means for the audience and the singer when these songs are performed.

Bostridge says the enforced silence of lockdown led him to start questioning an identity that had previously been defined by connecting directly with audiences. He began reflecting on the stories behind some of the works he performs, including Claudio Monteverdi’s 17th-century masterpiece Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, a song by Ravel from the Chansons madécasses, and Benjamin Britten’s confrontations with death. What does it mean for the audience when the singer inhabits these roles? And how does the performer’s own identity add to or subtract from the identities in the works themselves?

Bostridge is recognised as one of today’s greatest interpreters of the Lieder. He was the original Caliban in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, played Gustav von Aschenbach in the landmark 2007 production of Death in Venice, and gave the premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s song cycle, Sechs Gesänge aus dem Arabischen, which was specially written for him. He is also author of Witchcraft and its Transformations, A Singer’s Notebook, and Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession. Here he talks to journalist and reviewer for the FT Suzi Feay.