Opera Lafayette - Howard Crook

The lyric tenor Howard Crook was born in the United States and has lived and worked in Holland and France for the last 25 years. After having finished his Masters Degree in Music at the University of Illinois, specialising in opera, he won second prizes in the vocal competitions of Paris and s'Hertogenbosch.

Mr. Crook has sung and recorded a great deal of Bach's work, and has participated in memorable performances around the world with Philippe Herreweghe, John Eliot Gardiner, and Trevor Pinnock, among others. His other specialty is the high-tenor roles of the French Baroque. Having recorded many of these operas with William Christie, Mark Minkowski and Herreweghe, he is especially remembered for Atys, Armide, Alceste of Lully, and Castor et Pollux, Pygmalion of Rameau.

Apart from these specialties, Mr. Crook has sung many Mozart and Haydn operas, Pelleas, and quite an extended variety of romantic repertoire sung with the radio orchestras of Holland. He has recorded Berlioz songs with John Eliot Gardiner.

In 2001 he sang the title role in Thesee at the Boston Early Music Festival; and in 2003 is participated in a production of Cambert/Lully with "Symphonie du Marais" Hugo Reyne, a staged concert of Rameau Cantatas at Versailles, a recording of Lully Motets, and shared in a concert of Berlioz songs in Utrecht.

Mr. Crook teaches baroque singing and interpretation at the CNR conservatory in Paris, and gives master classes throughout Europe and Japan.

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