Benjamin Luxon

Benjamin Luxon was born in Redruth, Cornwall, in March 1937 and trained as a physical-education teacher before turning to singing in his twenties. He studied with Walther Gruner at the Guildhall School of Music in London and made his début with the English Opera Group in 1963.

He emerged as one of the leading British baritones of the contemporary operatic and concert repertoire. He created the title role in Britten’s *Owen Wingrave* — written for him as a television opera and first transmitted in 1971 — and parts in operas by Tippett, Maxwell Davies, Henze and Berkeley. His wider operatic repertoire included Eugene Onegin (a role he sang at Glyndebourne in 1971 to great acclaim), Wolfram in *Tannhäuser*, the Forester in *The Cunning Little Vixen*, and Verdi’s Posa, Iago and Macbeth. He sang at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Metropolitan Opera (from 1980), the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival, and worked extensively as a recitalist in the German lieder and English song repertoire — particularly in folk-song concert programmes with the guitarist Bill Crofut.

A hearing impairment in the early 1990s ended Luxon’s professional opera career. He concentrated thereafter on storytelling, narration and music-theatre projects. He died in Tehidy, Cornwall, in July 2024. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his contemporary British work and Glyndebourne appearances.