21 July 2010
Tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson, 69, Elegant Interpreter of Britten, Has Died
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Rolfe Johnson in 1991
© Erika Davidson
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ANTHONY ROLFE JOHNSON
Tackley, England, November 5, 1940 — London, July 20, 2010
Tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson, who garnered acclaim on the British music scene and abroad for his performances of Benjamin Britten's works — both on and off the opera stage — as well as for interpretations of roles like Pelléas, Idomeneo and Tito, has died. Johnson, who was 69, died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.
Rolfe Johnson's clean, sweet tenor and elegant musicianship were admired in recital, oratorio and opera during a career that lasted more than a quarter-century. The tenor made his debut with the English Opera Group in 1973, as Vaudémont in Tchaikovsky's Iolanta at Sadler's Wells, and appeared the following year at the Glyndebourne Festival as Stroh in Richard Strauss's Intermezzo. Other early Glyndebourne roles were Lensky in Eugene Onegin (1975) and Fenton in Falstaff (1976). He made his ENO debut in 1978, as Don Ottavio, and bowed at Covent Garden a decade later as Jupiter in Handel's Semele.
Although his opera-house repertory ranged from Monteverdi's Ulysses to Pelléas and Mozart's Idomeneo and Tito, Rolfe Johnson was probably most celebrated at home and abroad as an intelligent, highly individual interpreter of the music of Benjamin Britten, beginning with his first Albert Herring at Aldeburgh in 1974; other notable Britten assumptions for Rolfe Johnson were Aschenbach in Death in Venice at Geneva Opera and Scottish Opera; Peter Grimes at Glyndebourne, Scottish Opera and Bayerische Staatsoper; Essex in Gloriana and the Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia at ENO; and Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw at La Monnaie, as well as scores of performances of non-operatic Britten works, such as Les Illuminations, the War Requiem and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. In1997, Rolfe Johnson sang Captain Vere on the world-premiere recording of the original, complete form of Britten's Billy Budd.
Rolfe Johnson was scheduled to make his Met debut as Pelléas in 1988, but a vocal crisis caused him to withdraw from the engagement during rehearsals. He made his first Met appearance as Idomeneo, in 1991, and returned for Aschenbach (1994), Peter Grimes (1994) and Tito in La Clemenza di Tito (1997).
He was a prolific recording artist whose studio performances ranged from the St. Matthew Passion under John Eliot Gardiner and Georg Solti to The Mikado with Charles Mackerras. Rolfe Johnson's recital appearances included frequent concerts and recordings with Songmaker's Alamanac, of which he was a founding member, and a number of collaborations with pianist Graham Johnson, who chose him as one of the first artists featured in Hyperion's groundbreaking Schubert Edition. 
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