Northern Irish baritone Ben McAteer’s current highlights include Pangloss Candide with Marin Alsop in a new production by Lydia Steier at Theater an der Wien, and with the Hamburger Symphoniker and Martin Yates. He previously performed the role in the work’s Chinese premiere with the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra and Dane Lam. He returns to Hamburg for Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri.

He also revives his acclaimed Mountararat Iolanthe for ENO in 2023. A natural performer of Gilbert & Sullivan, he recently also appeared as Grand Inquisitor The Gondoliers and King Paramount Utopia Limited for Scottish Opera and for the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival.

Ben made his Wexford Festival Opera debut in 2022 as Baskir Lalla Roukh for Wexford Festival Opera and returned to Irish National Opera as Malatesta in Don Pasquale and Officer Two & Blazes in Peter Maxwell-Davies’ The Lighthouse.

Recent concert work includes Haydn’s Creation with the Ulster Orchestra and Daniele Rustioni and Brahms’ German Requiem with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.

Versatile in character and with a remarkable vocal range, he has sung both Figaro (Scottish Opera) and Count Almaviva (Irish National Opera) Le nozze di Figaro, Falke (Welsh National Opera) and Eisenstein (Northern Ireland Opera) Die Fledermaus, Pish-Tush (Scottish Opera) and Pooh-Bah (Lyric Opera Ireland) The Mikado, as well as Frank-Fritz Die tote Stadt (RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra), Goryanchikov From the House of the Dead (WNO), Sharpless Madama Butterfly (Opera Holland Park), Father Hänsel und Gretel (INO), Papageno Magic Flute (NI Opera), and Guglielmo Così fan tutte (Scottish Opera).

He features on a disc of undiscovered songs by Irish composer Ina Boyle with Iain Burnside, released on Delphian Records in August 2021, and has recorded the role of Jesus in Arthur Sullivan’s oratorio The Light of the World and Rupert Vernon in his operetta Haddon Hall, both with the BBC Concert Orchestra. In 2023 he featured on EM Records Maltworms and Milkmaids: Warlock and the Orchestra with the BBC Concert Orchestra and David Hill, containing all of Peter Warlock’s music which involves the use of an orchestra.

Ben was an Emerging Artist at Scottish Opera (during which time he won Outstanding Performance in Opera at the My Theatre Awards in Toronto for his performance of James in the world première of The Devil Inside), and trained at the National Opera Studio in London and at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Before embarking on a musical career, he studied Chemistry at the University of St Andrews.

See Ben McAteer perform Carmina Burana with the RSNO on 15 and 16 November 2024.