Biography
Described by Gramophone Magazine as staking serious claim to “the title of his generation’s most exciting British countertenor”, Alexander Chance has already built a significant reputation on the opera and concert stage and is in frequent demand as much for his interpretation of renaissance lute songs, Bach oratorio and Handel opera as for 20th-Century operatic roles and new commissions. In 2022, he became the first countertenor to win the International Handel Singing Competition, also winning the Audience Prize.
He has worked with many of the leading conductors in the early music world including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Masaaki Suzuki, René Jacobs, Masato Suzuki, John Butt, Laurence Cummings, Jonathan Cohen, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Marcus Creed, David Bates and Lionel Meunier and recent concert appearances have taken him to New York’s Lincoln Center, Tokyo Opera City, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Philharmonie de Paris, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana, Berliner Philharmonie, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and many others. Recent and future engagements include concerts with The English Concert, Dunedin Consort, Il Gardellino at the Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, the London Handel Players and Freiburger Barockorchester. A European tour with Bach Collegium Japan (with whom he works regularly) in summer 2024 saw him make his debut at the BBC Proms in Bach’s St John Passion.
Alexander has given multiple recitals at Paris’s Salle Cortot with French ensembles Les Accents and Les Ombres recorded for radio broadcast by France Musique. In 2022, he gave a joint recital with Ian Bostridge, accompanied by Julius Drake, at the Ravenna Festival, featuring songs and canticles by Benjamin Britten. With the lutenist Toby Carr, he has performed English lute songs at Wigmore Hall (London), Théâtre Grévin (Paris), and will take them to de Bijloke (Gent) and Bozar (Brussels) in the 24/25 season. His debut CD, ‘Drop not mine eyes’, recorded with Toby Carr, was released on the Linn label in 2023, and was named one of Gramophone Magazine’s ‘Best Albums of 2023’.
Recent and future operatic engagements include Voice of Apollo/Death in Venice for Welsh National Opera (in which he was described by both The Observer and The Telegraph as “shining visually and vocally”), Tolomeo/Giulio Cesare for English Touring Opera, Andronico / Tamerlano in semi-staged performances around Europe with the Freiburger Barockorchester and Oberon/A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Grange Festival.
Alexander was born in 1992, and studied at Oxford University, where he was a choral scholar at New College, graduating with a first-class degree in Classics.
