Bostridge studied history and philosophy of science in Cambridge and Oxford; at the latter university, he obtained a PhD in
history, and taught at Corpus Christi College for a few years. He was considered a rising star of historiography, and his
(published) thesis on witchcraft in England from 1650 to 1750 was hailed as the best modern history of the influence of
superstition on public thought.
Nonetheless, in 1992, he started diversifying into singing, made his concert
debut in 1993, his operatic debut (Britten's Midsummer night's dream at the Edinburgh Festival) in 1994, and was a full-time
singer from 1995.
Although he is mostly seen as a lieder interpreter, he sang quite a lot of opera, too, primarily Mozart and Britten at Covent
Garden and the English National Opera. On the concert podium, he made a first-rate international career: Paris, New York,
Vienna, Amsterdam, Brussels, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin, Salzburg, Milano, London of course...
He wrote books and newspaper columns (in his youth, he had also been a TV journalist for two years).
How come that he is considered a singer to be taken seriously, is totally beyond me; his mannered, thin tone production and
constant swaying between too open and too closed sounds (a different placement of voice for every single note) make him a
caricature of a tenor to my ears.
Reference and picture source
