British baritone Huw Montague-Rendall to perform at Cambridge Summer Music with ‘peerless’ accompanist Graham Johnson

British baritone Huw Montague-Rendall has achieved international fame in only a few years.

He recently made stage debuts at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opéra National de Paris, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Salzburg and Glyndebourne Festivals, earning acclaim for his compelling artistry, stagecraft and musicianship.

Now he is coming to the Cambridge Summer Music Festival to perform Franz Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin with ‘peerless’ song accompanist Graham Johnson.

“I have performed this twice before but it has always been different with different collaborators and I’m so lucky to be performing with Graham Johnson, who is quite correctly considered to be one of the greatest song pianists ever. He is an absolute icon in this field and being able to perform this piece with him is incredible,” he says.

Huw explains the narrative of the piece: “It follows the story of this young apprentice boy who has set out to start work and he is not quite like all the other kids. He is not as strong, not as quick but he’s desperate to be the best he can be and he falls in love with the daughter of the miller.

“It’s all centred around his yearning and love for this character and he’s befriended a brook, a river, to be his companion. Throughout the whole thing he’s always talking to this little brook asking for advice and telling it his secrets and his desires and asking its opinion on what he should do and sets his life to be guided by this stream that he follows and eventually, drowns himself in. It’s quite dramatic.”

The work has a special meaning in Huw’s family. He says: “My father sang the same cycle with Graham, when they were both students at the Royal Academy of Music, so to keep it in the family like that is quite wonderful as well.”

Huw’s parents are opera singers. His father is the tenor David Rendall, who has performed with Royal Opera Covent Garden and the English National Opera, and his mother is mezzo-soprano Diana Montague, who has has sung for major opera companies across the world, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House, and at festivals including Salzburg and Bayreuth.

However, Huw was not always destined to follow in their footsteps, instead launching a local covers band with his friends that performed at weddings and parties during his teenage years. It was only once they recorded an album that his dad, David, suggested Huw could “do something” with his voice.

“I think they were the greatest band ever to have existed. It was a shame we had to disband,” he laughs.

“We wrote our own music and then we started doing covers and playing in events, for weddings and parties when we started getting a bit older because we needed a bit more money. And that was so much fun. The guys were such amazing musicians. They’ve all gone on to have wonderful careers in music. I’m still in touch with them now, which is lovely.

“When I was about 15 my voice had settled a bit after it broke and we recorded an album. It was a charity album called Leonora for the Leonora cancer charity in the south-west. My dad heard one of the songs that I sang and he said, ‘You know, you could do something with this voice. You have a voice, would you like to start having lessons?’ And I thought ‘I don’t want to sing opera! I want to do musical theatre or be a rock star or I want to be a policeman.’ So I suppose it was my parents who heard it first and told me I could do something different with my voice.

“I never sang in a choir when I was a child, which a lot of opera singers do because they find out about classical music by singing in church choirs or cathedral choirs. We lived in the countryside in the middle of nowhere in the south and had a very normal - I suppose, to me - upbringing.”

He eventually trained at the Royal College of Music. In summer 2016, Montague Rendall was a Jerwood Young Artist with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where he sang the role of Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, for which he won the John Christie Award 2016. The following summer he joined the prestigious Young Artist Programme at the Salzburg Festspiele and was a member of the International Opera Studio in Zürich from 2016 to 2018.

Now aged 30, Huw will release his debut album Contemplation in September and this season his engagements include debuts at the Wiener Staaatsoper as well as returns to Festival d’Aix en Provence, the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival and Opéra de Paris.

Now he acknowledges that his parents’ careers had a huge influence on his musical taste.

“We grew up going to Glyndebourne lot and I have very distinct memories of my dad singing Othello by Verdi and that has stuck in my head as being still my favourite opera,” says Huw.

“I think it probably has a lot to do with my childhood related to that piece. I knew it was special when I was a child but then as I got older and understood the music and the language more it has stuck with me to continue to be one of my favourite pieces.

“My favourite memories are of going backstage seeing all the sets, watching my watching my parents get into costume, into make-up, into character. Hearing the orchestra tune up was always very amazing. I grew up in these theatres and now I’m working in them, too. I go back and I have these nostalgic boosts from the smell of the backstage equipment and the general smell of the theatre brings everything back to me.

“Performing at Glyndebourne was a highlight of my life. It was an amazing feeling to be joining my parents’ legacy on that stage. And it’s such a joy every time I get to go back. I’ll go back next year.”

Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin will be performed at 7.30pm on Friday, 26 July in Jesus College Chapel. Visit cambridgesummermusic.com for tickets, priced £14-£36.