"... his Tebaldo rings out as if he were in the running for the Fourth Tenor." The Times

After a quarter century of singing in professional opera productions around the world, Mark Milhofer is at the peak of his vocal powers. Able to switch comfortably from Monteverdi to Mozart, from Rossini to Lehar and Britten to Eotvos, Mark has the years of experience that keep him in constant demand by international theatres. From being a Choral Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, to Post Diploma Training at the Guildhall School of Music in London and then winning one of the few places on the Italian Opera Studio in Milan, Mark has the solid technique that allows him to be so versatile. 

He made his operatic debut as the Madwoman in Britten's Curlew River, recorded for CD by Koch (available here), but it was the role of Giannetto in British Youth Opera's production of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra that brought him to the attention of public and critics alike. Subsequently invited by the As.Li.Co. Opera Studio in Milan to study in Italy, he worked with Renata Scotto and Leyler Gencer, singing the title role in Pergolesi's newly-discovered La Morte di S. Giuseppe. He went on to sing the role of Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff in several major Italian theatres. 

After finishing his studies, Mark made his international debut when he was chosen by Giorgio Strehler to inaugurate the late great Italian director’s brand-new theatre in Milan with Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. Initially, there were 41 shows, a Guinness World Record for the same opera in the same theatre, and over the next 10 years the opera was often revived with Mark singing it over 100 times, including performances in Cairo and Alexandria, Moscow, Beijing, Istanbul, Seoul and many cities in Europe.

Apart from the privilege of singing in some of the most beautiful theatres in the world, other highlights in Mark’s career include working with Franco Zeffirelli on his production of Pagliacci, which was performed in a Greek Amphitheatre in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens. The hilarious Dario Fo production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which involves spinning around the stage using two side tables as roller skates. Getting completely naked for a movingly staged Billy Budd in Turin, directed by Davide Livermore. Wearing impossibly high-heeled shoes that had no heel in Stuttgart for Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (Calixto Bieito, dir). Learning magic tricks from a professional magician for Menotti’s The Consul. Rising up into the gods in a pink carriage in Cenerentola in Bern. Being blindfolded for almost an entire opera (Britten’s Curlew River in Perugia and Trento), and singing in a haystack in Purcell’s King Arthur in Berlin and Vienna. 

New CDs out - Enrico Caruso - His Songs (available here), The Complete Folk Song settings by Benjamin Britten (available here), John Joubert's Jane Eyre (available here) and an album of Tosti songs (available here)

A busy concert schedule has included music by Henry Purcell at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Wigmore Hall in London with The King's Consort, his Proms début with the same group in Handel's Judas Maccabeus, Bach's St John Passion at St John's, Smith Square with Polyphony, and also in Milan with I Pomeriggi Musicale. He also performed Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with them and in Parma with Bruno Bartoletti, and again recently with the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He has sung the War Requiem in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, under Paul Kildea, Orff's Carmina Burana for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, as well as in St. Etienne, Munich, Zagreb, Parma and Monte Carlo and Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle for the Aldeburgh Festival.

Recital programmes, often to promote new CD releases, include Tosti: The Song of a Life and Benjamin Britten Complete Folk Song Settings. Mark’s latest project is based around the songs written by and for the great tenor Enrico Caruso. He has also written the introduction for a new book of Caruso’s songs which have been published together for the first time.

In Great Britain he made his English National Opera debut in Monteverdi's Orfeo, appeared in Purcell's The Indian Queen with the King's Consort, followed by Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Tebaldo in Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi for the Castelward Opera in N.Ireland, Alberto in Rossini's La Gazzetta for Garsington Opera and Dr Fitzpiers in the European première of Stephen Paulus's The Woodlanders. For the Royal Opera House he has performed in Luigi Rossi's Orfeo and Eumete in Monteverdi's Ulisse.

Further significant appearances have included the role of Habbinas in Maderna's Satyricon, directed by Cobelli, Peter Quint in Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the Teatro Manuel in Malta, Rossini's La Scala di Seta in France, conducted by Jean Claude Malgoire, and Almaviva in Dario Fo's highly successful production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Holland, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain. More recent appearances include the role of Brighella in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in Bari, Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto, the Magician in Menotti's The Consul, Don Narciso in Il Turco in Italia, The Novice in Britten's Billy Budd, and Bob Boles in Peter Grimes (available here), all in Turin, Pergolesi's L'Olimpiade in Jesi, Ravenna, Modena and Reggio Emilia and La Cenerentola in Nantes and Angers, a return to the role of The Madwoman in Curlew River in Trento and Pisa, working with Zeffirelli in his production of Pagliacci in Athens and Florence, Telamone in Ercole sul Termodonte by Vivaldi, Prunier in Puccini's La Rondine and the role of the Conte di Bosco Nero in La Vedova Scaltra by Wolf-Ferrari (available on CD and DVD), all three in Venice. There has also been the title role in Orpheus in the Underworld by Offenbach in Cagliari, Ernesto in Donizetti's Don Pasquale in Belgium, Belmonte in Die Entfuhrung in Salzburg and Rennes (available here), Lysander in A Midsummer's Night Dream in Dublin, Henry Smithers in The Emperor Jones (Gruenberg) in Ancona (cond. Bartoletti) (available here), Giasone in Medea in Corinto (Mayr) in St Gallen (CD available here).