Background
A native of Wellington, Shropshire,Nigel was brought up in a musical family where his father sang in a choir and his mother taught the piano, so from a very early age he was studying music
conductor music educator musicologist opera singer
A native of Wellington, Shropshire,Nigel was brought up in a musical family where his father sang in a choir and his mother taught the piano, so from a very early age he was studying music
Nigel Rogers studied at King"s College, Cambridge (where he was a choral scholar) from 1953 to 1956, in Rome in 1957, in Milan from 1958 to 1959, and with Gerhard Hüsch at the Munich Hochschule für Musik (1959–1961).
Singing critics like Melanie Eskenazi describe him as a vocal virtuoso of the local phrasing and decoration (ornamenti) of those particular musical periods exactly as they were practised back then He is considered a world authority in the field of European early music, the scores of which he helped promote and rescue as a music genre, since the outset of his early career. He made his operatic debut in Amsterdam, and has sung in many renowned international opera houses.
He has given numerous singing master classes and workshops at music conservatories worldwide, for early music and opera singers of all nationalities.
Operas with which he was notably associated include L"Orfeo by Monteverdi, in which he took the title role and made many recordings. From 1978 until his retirement he was a professor of classical singing and operatic voice coach at the Royal College of Music in London.
In 1979 he founded and thereupon conducted the vocal ensemble Chiaroscuro for the performance of Italian baroque compositions. In July 1993 he starred at a Handel oratorio at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Opera House in Mexico City.
On 3 May 2005, he gave his 70th birthday recital concert at Wigmore Hall in London, singing works by early music composers Carissimi, Caccini, Sigismondo d"India, Frescobaldi, Marco Marazzoli, Kapsberger, Rossi, Stradella, and Froberger.