David Butt Philip is genuinely world beating. He is a superb tenor and well on course to establishing himself as one of the best opera singers on the circuit. His voice is resonant but supple, straightforwardly beautiful, sophisticated, textured and yet secure. His acting is tasteful and well-judged. His phrasing is impeccable. And he has a fine musical intelligence that he deploys with charm and conviviality. He is also one of the last great British singers to have established himself before Brexit restricted so many of our artists from the chance to flourish and become ambassadors for the country.
His case is illustrative. Butt Philip is 43 and the burgeoning of his international career coincided with the referendum. He had started working abroad regularly in 2016 and – “very luckily” as he says – had just about got the required toe-hold when the Brexit transition period ended. He has now sung Walther in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger in Vienna, Bacchus in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in Edinburgh, Don José in Bizet’s Carmen back in Vienna, Grigory in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Metropolitan in New York. He is in demand all over Europe and constantly travelling – Lille, Madrid, Prague and so on. As we speak, he is about to sing Apollo in Strauss’s Daphne at the State Opera in Berlin. The reason he considers himself “lucky” is that …
