So I'm a sucker for baritones: Sir Thomas Allen as Count Almaviva

By far my favorite Count of all time has to be Sir Thomas Allen. He's so wonderful that he almost makes you want for Susanna to leave Figaro behind and go off with the Count! Oooooh baby...!

Sir Thomas Boaz Allen, CBE, (born September 10, 1944) is an internationally renowned English baritone opera singer from Seaham Harbour, County Durham.

Born to Florence and Thomas Allen in the Durham fishing village of Seaham Harbour in 1944, Allen studied at Ryhope Grammar School from 1955 to 1964, becoming captain of his house and later head boy while also doing well in sports, such as in athletics, rugby and especially golf.

Allen's initial ambition was to be a doctor but this was later abandoned when he won a place at the Royal College of Music in 1964, where he studied for four years, specializing in oratorio and Lieder until 1968. He won the prestigious Queen's Prize while studying at the college which allowed him to study under James Lockhart who noticed Allen's talents. Under Lockhart, Allen then shifted his attention from Lieder and oratorio to opera and in 1969, he made his debut as Figaro in Rossini's The Barber of Seville with the Welsh National Opera. His early roles with the WNO also included Mozart's Almaviva, Guglielmo and Papageno, Falke, Billy Budd, Posa, Yevgeny Onegin and Germont.

In 1971, Allen made his Covent Garden debut as Donald in Billy Budd and he joined the company the following year. His solo Glyndebourne Festival debut was as Papageno in 1973, and he returned as Mozart's Figaro (1974), Guglielmo (1975) and Don Giovanni (1977); he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1981 as Papageno. He sang Faust in the British stage premiere of Busoni's opera for the English National Opera in 1986. His Chicago debut was Rossini's Figaro in 1991.

More recently, Allen has performed Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus, Don Alfonso, Ulisse and Don Giovanni at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Don Giovanni at La Scala, Yeletsky (in The Queen of Spades), Sharpless (in Madama Butterfly), and the title role in Sweeney Todd at the Royal Opera House, Eisenstein at the Glyndebourne Festival, Don Alfonso at the Salzburg Easter and Summer Festivals, Forester (The Cunning Little Vixen) at the San Francisco Opera and Beckmesser (in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Allen also appears in recital in the United Kingdom, throughout Europe, in Australia and America. The greatest part of his repertoire has been extensively recorded with such distinguished names as Georg Solti, James Levine, Sir Neville Marriner, Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Riccardo Muti.

Thomas Allen's first book, Foreign Parts - A Singer's Journal was published in 1993. He recently directed for the first time in Albert Herring at the Royal College of Music, Così fan Tutte and Don Giovanni (for the Samling Foundation, of which he is the patron) at the Sage Music Centre in Gateshead. In 2006, he made his American directorial debut with a production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro for Arizona Opera. In 2007, he directed a new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia for Scottish Opera.

Allen has performed with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for thirty-five years. He has sung over forty roles with the company.

Sir Thomas Allen also performed in a Live Concert Recording of Leonard Bernstein's Candide at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York was also celebrated in 2006.

In September 2008, he performed under the direction of Woody Allen in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi for the LA Opera.

Information Source: Wikipedia

Featured here as Count Almaviva at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze (Florence), 1979.