Simon Meadows

Baritone

Award-winning Australian baritone Simon Meadows enjoys a busy opera and concert career throughout Europe, Asia and Australasia.

His many roles for Opera Australia have included Telramund (Lohengrin), The Count (Le nozze di Figaro), Yamadori (Madama Butterfly), The Gaoler (Tosca) and The Lieutenant in Kate Miller-Heidke’s The Rabbits. In 2023, he sang Alberich in Melbourne Opera’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, appeared as soloist for Tasmanian Symphony and Melbourne Bach Choir and took leading roles for Victorian Opera. In 2024, he sings Michele (Il tabarro) and the title role in Gianni Schicchi for Opera Australia.

Previously for Victorian Opera, he sang Priam in Simon Bruckhard’s Cassandra, Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, Orest’s Tutor in Elektra, First Nazarene in Salome and Jimmy in Stuart Greenbaum’s The Parrot Factory. Simon was the baritone soloist in the world premiere of Richard Mills’ song cycle In Tempore Bello and Faure’s Requiem – in collaboration with the Australian Ballet.

For Melbourne Opera, Simon has performed the title roles in Macbeth and The Barber of Seville, Alberich in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier, Escamillo in Carmen, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte and many others.

Simon’s roles for other companies include Germont (La traviata), Alfio/Tonio in Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci and Ibn Hakia in Iolanta (West Australian Opera), Macbeth (Kennet Opera), Villequier in Le roi malgre lui (Wexford Festival Opera), Escamillo in Carmen and Sonora in La fanciulla del West (Opera Up Close), Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia (Lyric Opera Melbourne), Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Co-Opera), Marcello in La bohème (Opera Siam, Thailand), Creon in Milhaud’s Medea (Lost and Found, WA) and the leading role of Rupert Brooke in Nicholas Vines’ The Hive (Chamber Made Opera).

A celebrated concert artist, Simon has taken the bass solos in Schubert’s Mass in G (Wexford, Ireland), Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem (Romsey Abbey, UK and Melbourne Symphony), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mozart’s Requiem (Sydney Philharmonia), Carmina Burana and A Sea Symphony (Royal Melbourne Philharmonic), Judas Maccabaeus (Heidelberg Choral Society), The Creation (St James’s Church, Sydney), Serenade to Music (Victorian Opera), and Kindertotenlieder, Messiah and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia (Monash Symphony). He made his German début singing Frank Martin’s In terra pax at Berlin’s Heilige Kreuz Kirche.