Stuart Skelton Appointed to Academic Chair
Superstar heldentenor and Sydney favourite Stuart Skelton has been appointed to lead the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s (CCM) internationally-renowned opera department in the role of the new J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair in Opera.
A college alumnus, Stuart Skelton will lead the institution into a new era of excellence.
Skelton (MM Voice, ’95) joined CCM’s faculty in August 2021, working closely with faculty and supporting a full studio of students while balancing an international performance career. Remembered in Sydney for his many outstanding performances from Don Jose to Peter Grimes and Hermann in Queen of Spades, Skelton is a Grammy nominee and 2014 International Opera Awards Male Singer of the Year winner. His repertoire also includes many of opera’s other most complex roles, from Wagner’s Parsifal, Tristan, Lohengrin, Erik, Rienzie and Siegmund to Beethoven’s Florestan, Verdi’s Otello and Saint-Saëns’ Samson.
Skelton has a busy schedule which straddles the Atlantic and both hemispheres from recitals and festivals to seasons at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, English National Opera, Paris Opera, Bavarian State Operas, Hamburg State Opera, Berlin State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, La Scala Milan, Dresden Semperoper and the Vienna State Opera. Renowned for his beauty of tone, outstanding musicianship, power and dramatic expressivity, in 2021 he was the featured soloist at the Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall. He also made a critically acclaimed recording of Peter Grimes with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choirs, which won Gramophone’s Classical Music Awards Recording of the Year and Opera Recording of the Year in October 2021.
Skelton has worked with a “Who’s Who” of conductors, among them, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Asher Fisch, Sir Andrew Davis, Edward Gardner, Sir Tony Pappano, David Robertson, Sir Simon Rattle and Simone Young.
In partnership with CCM colleagues as well as with local and international professional artists, Skelton and CCM Opera will launch a language and cultural immersion program that gives Artist Diploma students opportunities to study abroad and work with professional artists in Europe, beginning in fall 2022.
