Howell, Gwynne (1938– )

Welsh bass. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music and sang in operas by Wagner there. From 1968 he sang with the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, and from 1970 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London in operas by Strauss, Puccini, Verdi, and Mussorgsky, and in the 1972 first performance of Maxwell Davies' Taverner. He is well known as a concert singer in Europe and North America (for example performing Beethoven's Missa solemnis), and in March 1986 sang Gurnemanz in a new production of Parsifal at the London Coliseum. He made his New York Metropolitan Opera House debut in 1985, as Pogner in Meistersinger, and sang King Philip in Don Carlos for the English National Opera Ensemble in 1992.