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Biography |
by Joseph Stevenson
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Nathan Berg is a Canadian baritone with a particularly strong identification with classic and Baroque repertoire and period performance.
He studied in his native country, the U.S.A., and Paris, but his most important teacher was Vera Rozsa, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. While a student at the Guildhall, he won the Gold Medal for Singers. He is also a prizewinner in major international competitions, including the Royal Overseas League, and the Kathleen Ferrier, Walther Grüner and Peter Pears Lieder Competitions.
He has sung in major productions of several Mozart operas: Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro in Nice, the Netherlands Opera, and Tourcoing; Masetto in Don Giovanni at the Netherlands Opera and in the Peter Brook production which toured under the batons of Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding to Brussels, Tokyo, La Scala in Milan, and Lyon; Guglielmo in Cosě fan tutte at the Welsh National Opera; and Leporello in Don Giovanni at Tourcoing, the English National Opera, and in the same Peter Brook touring company.
Other operas Berg sings are Rameau's Les Indes Galantes (at the Opéra-Bastille in Paris) and Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea (Netherlands Opera). Returning to Canada, he sang Schaunard in Puccini's La Bohčme at the Canadian Opera Company.
He has a wide repertory as a concert singer. He has sung in Bach's Mass in B minor with Boston Baroque, Handel's Rinaldo with the Academy of Ancient Music, Jepthta with the RIAS Kammerchor, Messiah with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Theodora with Les Arts Florissants. He has also sung Mozart's Requiem with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In non-period-instrument performances, he appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Mozart's C minor Mass, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in Haydn's The Seasons, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the Baltimore Symphony and the Ninth Symphony in Washington. In addition, he sang orchestrated versions of Schubert Lieder with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, and has sung in Schubert's Mass in A flat with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Belohlavek at a Henry Woods BBC Proms Concert in London.
Some conductors with whom he has appeared in concert performances are: Christie, Herreweghe, Tortelier, Norrington, Rilling, Leppard, Dohnanyi, Masur, and Salonen. He has sung at the Harrogate International Festival, the Three Choirs Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival, where he sang a highly praised Wolf recital. He has also recitalized at Wigmore Hall in London and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, accompanied by Roger Vignoles. |
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