Mark Glanville


Mark Glanville is an English classical singer and writer. He grew up in West London with his father, the writer Brian Glanville.

Writer

He chronicled his early life, including flirtations with the world of football hooliganism, studying Classics and Philosophy at Oxford University and forging an operatic career as a bass-baritone with Opera North, Scottish Opera, Lisbon Opera and New Israeli Opera among others, in his memoir The Goldberg Variations, published by Harper Collins in 2003 and shortlisted for the Wingate Prize for Jewish Literature and the National Sporting Club Award. In his memoir Glanville suggests that his interest in football violence had ended by the time of his marriage to the soprano Julia Melinek, but he later confessed to being drawn back into that world via the notorious hooligan firms of Millwall in south London. In the final chapter of his memoir Glanville claimed to have found his true identity as a Jew.

Opera

Among his opera recordings Glanville sang the role of Armando in Donizetti's L'assedio di Calais for Opera Rara.

Yiddish song

His later work as a singer moved away from the opera house towards the recital hall with the song cycle Yiddish Winterreise – A Holocaust Survivor’s Inner Journey told through Yiddish song, released on the Naxos label in 2010. Using songs from the Yiddish folk tradition, many in original arrangements by the composer/accompanist Alexander Knapp, Glanville took Schubert's Winterreise "as a symbol for the destruction of home and family". The programme was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of Pro Musica Hebraica.
A second programme of Yiddish song Di Sheyne Milnerin – A Yiddish Die Schöne Müllerin was released on the Nimbus label in 2012 and performed live at Symphony Space, New York City in 2011 and St John's, Smith Square in October 2012. Glanville will be returning to the Kennedy Center in March 2016 to perform secular songs by Salomon Sulzer for Pro Musica Hebraica in the programme, 'Wandering Stars'.

Later work

Since 2008, Glanville has been focusing on the history and traditions of the Italian region of Apulia, and performing as a singer and ciaramella player with the first London-based pizzica and southern Italian traditional music group, Amaraterra.