Northumbrian bass-baritone Michael Ronan is an up-and-coming artist praised for his ‘commanding voice and stage presence’ (Evening Standard). He has recently finished a season at Glyndebourne Festival Opera performing the role of Monsieur Barbu in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (Poulenc) and covering the roles of Colline in La Boheme (Puccini) and Harvey in The Wreckers (Smyth). He is currently a member of Royal Academy Opera (RAO) where he is the proud recipient of the Sainsbury Award and is generously supported by The Countess of Munster Musical Trust.
He saw recent success as the winner of the Royal Academy of Music’s 2022 Bicentenary Prize with his performance described as ‘outstandingly moving’. He has also been awarded the Joan Chissell Schumann Lieder Prize, the Sir Thomas Armstrong English Song Prize, and the Blyth-Buesst Opera Prize.
Michael has been commended on his recent performance as Nick Shadow in The Rakes Progress (Stravinsky) with RAO, with whom he has also performed Don Inigo Gomez in L’Heure Espagnole (Ravel), Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte (Mozart), and Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Britten). He has sung Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea (Handel) with Ensemble OrQuesta, and John Proctor in The Crucible (Robert Ward) at OPERNFEST, Berlin.
Next, Michael will be performing the role of Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro with RAO and will return to Glyndebourne this summer to perform The Keeper of the Madhouse and Nick Shadow (cover) in The Rakes Progress, Masetto (cover) in Don Giovanni, and the 2nd Commissioner in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
