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Bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams enjoys a vibrant career on both the opera and concert stage and a vocal versatility that allows him to present repertoire ranging from the classics of Bach, Gluck, Handel and Mozart through to more recent masters such as Britten, Debussy, Stravinsky and Wagner.

Andrew Foster-Williams’ career, initially built on his strong Baroque credentials, has in recent seasons found a new dramatic direction with successes as Pizarro (Fidelio) at Theater an der Wien and Philharmonie de Paris, and a unanimously praised debut as Telramund in Wagner’s Lohengrin under esteemed conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin at the Festival de Lanaudière.  A subsequent portrayal of Captain Balstrode in Christoph Loy’s divisive production of Peter Grimes at Theater an der Wien, alongside acclaimed performances as Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress), Donner (Das Rheingold) and Gunther (Götterdämmerung) have further enhanced an already highly regarded operatic profile. Other recent role debuts as Lysiart in Christof Loy’s new staging of Euryanthe at Theater an der Wien under Constantin Trinks and as Kurnewal in Tristan und Isolde at La Monnaie under Alain Altinoglu highlight a dramatic capacity that has earned the respect of many stage directors as he “holds the attention of the audience with the energy of someone who has great experience, and with sensational vocal ability, which he uses with total freedom…” (Opéra).

Praised for his facility in the French operatic repertoire, recent roles include Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande), his debut as Escamillo in Kasper Holten’s spectacular staging of Carmen on the floating stage in Bregenz, as well as specially curated performances at Opéra National de Bordeaux to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of Cervantes and featuring music from Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée and Massenet’s Don Quichotte under Marc Minkowski. He made his house debut at Opernhaus Zürich in 2021 as the Four Villains in Andreas Homoki’s new setting of Les contes d’Hoffmann under the baton of Antonino Fogliani and last season reprised those roles in Barrie Kosky’s fantastical staging at Komische Oper Berlin.  As a regular guest on the Opéra français series of the Palazzetto Bru Zane label, recent CD releases include Joncières’ Dimitri, Gounod’s Cinq-Mars, Saint-Saëns’ Proserpine, winner of Best Opera 2018 at the International Classical Music Awards and, most recently, Gounod’s Faust, winner of the Opera of the 19th Century category at the Opus Klassik 2020 awards.

Boasting an extensive discography, other commercial releases include Beethoven’s Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II with the San Francisco Symphony (Tilson Thomas) released on SFSMedia, and The Seasons with the Gabrieli Consort and Players (McCreesh) released on Signum and shortlisted for the 2017 Grammophone Awards. Performances captured on DVD include the Gramophone Award winning The Fairy Queen with Glyndebourne Festival Opera (Christie).

An impressive line-up of concert invitations has taken Andrew Foster-Williams to the most celebrated orchestras and conductors of our day. These include The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst, Salzburg Mozarteum with Ivor Bolton, San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Richard Egarr, Hong Kong Philharmonic under Edo de Waart, the Gulbenkian Orchestra with Lorenzo Viotti and the Sibelius Festival with Dalia Stasevska.  Foster-Williams offers a concert repertoire as diverse as it is broad which includes Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, Britten’s War Requiem, Schönberg’s Gurrelieder, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass and Mahler’s Symphony No.8.

Performance highlights of the 2022/23 season include a new production of Les contes d’Hoffmann at Göteborgs Operan under Sébastien Rouland and Dvorak’s Stabat Mater with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra under Kazushi Ono.
Andrew Foster-Williams