Benjamin Luxon
Cornish baritone Benjamin Matthew Luxon was born in Redruth, Cornwall, UK on 24 March 1937. He moved to London to study teaching and sang only informally. When someone suggested that he apply to study singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he did, and was accepted, learning with German-born baritone Walther Gruner. He won third prize in Munich at the 1961 ARD Music Competition, establishing him on the international scene when he was only twenty-one.
He joined Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group, touring the USSR in 1963 with roles in Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia, and in 1971 Britten wrote his TV opera Owen Wingrave with Luxon's voice in mind for the title role, and Luxon was the first to sing it, with the English Opera Group.
During the 1970s Luxon became very popular internationally, beginning a long association with English National Opera and appearing at New York Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and in Los Angeles, Munich, Vienna and at most major opera houses in Europe. He also appeared in concerts and recitals, usually with accompanist David Willison, and was known for his extremely wide range of repertoire, including folk music, music hall and parlour songs, early and contemporary music. His legacy of more than a hundred recordings is particularly strong in early and mid-twentieth century British songwriting and folksong arrangements.
He retired from singing in his fifties, in the early 1990s, due to hearing loss, but developed a secondary career reading poetry, narrating, giving masterclasses and directing opera and plays. In 2000 he moved to the USA and settled in Sandisfield in the Berkshires, Western Massachusetts, having previously discovered the area while singing regularly at Tanglewood earlier in his career.
In 2012 he was asked to direct a play in honour of the town's two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. He wrote, directed and staged The Pageant of Sandisfield and this developed into regular performances by the so-called Sandisfield Players, a community theatre group, with Luxon, one of the founders, as director. In 2016 Luxon was able to take his Sandisfield Players to the dramatic open-air Minack Theatre at Porthcurno near Land's End in Cornwall, UK for seven performances of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.
Interviewed by Bernadette Brusco for the Berkshire Eagle in 2019, Ben Luxon said 'I'm a wave rider. I ride the waves life has sent my way.' The following year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ben Luxon read and recorded a series of love poems, placed online by Sandisfield Arts Center.
Benjamin Luxon died in Sandisfield, Massachusetts, USA on 25 July 2024 (or 26 July, according to one source), aged eighty-seven.
A selection of articles about Benjamin Luxon
Classical music news - July 2024 Obituaries - Our summary of those the classical music world has lost this month
CD Spotlight. Perfection - Benjamin Britten folksong arrangements, recommended by Howard Smith. '... this release is worth several times it's weight in gold.'