Bruce Kelly
Baritone Bruce Kelly’s extensive career has taken him to many of the important opera houses and concert halls of Europe, such as Nice, Strasbourg, Lieges, Avignon, Vienna, Paris, Brussels, and Moscow, as well as those of his native Canada. He has appeared in a variety of leading roles including Germont (La traviata), Der Sprecher (Die Zauberflöte), Walton (I puritani), Capulet (Roméo et Juliette), Marcello (La bohème), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), Falstaff (Falstaff), Lescaut (Manon Lescaut), Wolfram (Tannhäuser), Garibaldo (Rodelinda), Doctor Engels (The Student Prince), Achillas (Giulio Cesare), Abimelech (Samson et Dalila) and Ernesto (Il pirata). He has performed on Canadian stages from coast to coast, with companies such as Pacific Opera Victoria, Calgary Opera, Opera Ontario, Opera Lyra Ottawa, Opera in Concert, Toronto Operetta Theatre, and l’Opéra de Québec.
In Canada Mr. Kelly has appeared as a frequent guest soloist with all the major orchestras, and abroad with orchestras such as the Prague Radio Symphony and the Symphony of Kunming, China, in works such as Elijah, Carmina Burana, the Bach Passions, The Creation, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the Verdi, Brahms and other Requiem masses, and numerous Handel Oratorios including Samson and Messiah. He appeared in the first national CBC radio broadcast of the Mozart orchestration of Handel's Messiah, in the Canadian premiere of Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, and gave the Canadian Premiere of the staged version of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. As a disciple of the Lieder tradition he has given uniquely dramatized performances of Schubert’s Winterreise, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and dramatic readings of Ludwig Tieck’s Die schöne Magelone and the accompanying Brahms cycle.
Recent projects include Populescu in Countess Maritza, Der Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte, Der Musiklehrer in Ariadne auf Naxos and Sharpless in Madama Butterfly for Pacific Opera Victoria, Sacristan in a concert version of Tosca for l’Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières, Messiah the Guelph Chamber Choir and the Kingston Symphony, Eight Songs for a Mad King for the Talisker Players and Falke in Die Fledermaus for Calgary Opera.
Kelly is a member of the Voice Faculty at Queen’s University.
September 2023
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““Bruce Kelly as Sharpless was his usual class act, vocally sure and character sound.”
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