British tenor David Butt Philip is quickly becoming a firm favorite on the major international stages. An alumnus of the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme, his recent debuts in roles such as the title role of Lohengrin and Stolzing (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) at Wiener Staatsoper; Florestan (Fidelio) and Prince (Rusalka) at the Royal Ballet and Opera; Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos) at the Edinburgh International Festival and Bayerische Staatsoper and title roles of Der Zwerg and Lohengrin at Deutsche Oper Berlin, have earned him major critical and public acclaim.
Previous roles include Apollo in Daphne by Richard Strauss (Wiener Staatsoper, Staatsoper Berlin); Lohengrin (Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin); Don José in Carmen (Deutsche Oper Berlin; English National Opera); the title role in Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg (Deutsche Oper Berlin); Kaiser in Die Frau ohne Schatten (Deutsche Oper Berlin; San Francisco Opera); Florestan in Fidelio (Metropolitan Opera; Bayerische Staatsoper, National Theatre in Prague and subsequently at the Royal Ballet and Opera, replacing an ailing Jonas Kaufmann). He made his début at the Metropolitan Opera in 2021 as Grigory (Boris Godunuv) and returned in 2022 as Laertes in Brett Dean’s Hamlet and in 2025 as Florestan (Fidelio).
He has sung the role as the Prince in Rusalka in three different productions: at the English National Opera, directed by Tatjana Gürbaca (2020); Christof Loy’s production in Teatro Real de Madrid (2020); and Natalie Abrahami’s production in the Royal Ballet and Opera (2022 and 2023). The Royal Swedish Opera’s production is his fourth Rusalka and his début at this company.
Born in 1980 and brought up in Wells in Somerset, Butt Philip was a chorister at Peterborough Cathedral. He is a graduate of Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, and the National Opera Studio and was also a Samling Artist, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and winner of the prestigious John Christie Award in 2011.
