Baritone Benjamin Luxon has Died, Aged 87

The English lyric baritone was closely associated with the music of Benjamin Britten

The renowned British baritone Benjamin Luxon, who sang the title role in Britten's Owen Wingrave at its premiere, has passed away at the age of 87.

Born in Cornwall, England in 1937, Luxon was the son of a laborer who was also a keen amateur singer. The young Benjamin took part in a great many concerts as a child. He studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and his career began in earnest when he won a prize at the ARD International Singing Competition in Munich in 1961.

Soon after, Luxon became closely acquainted with Benjamin Britten and joined his English Opera Group. He had early roles in Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia, before Britten wrote the role of Owen Wingrave specifically for him.

During the 1980s, Luxon made a number of high-profile operatic debuts, including Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala, and Berg’s Wozzeck in Los Angeles.

However, his singing career was sadly cut short in the mid-1980s, when he suffered damage to his hearing and became partially deaf. For a time he used a hearing aid on stage, but he found that he could not perform to his previous standard, and by the mid-1990s he decided to give up singing in public.

In 2007, a cochlear implant allowed Luxon to return to certain types of vocal work, including as a narrator and voice actor. During this time, he recorded Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, Strauss’s Enoch Arden, Honegger’s King David, and an audio book of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Luxon's voice is preserved on more than one hundred opera, recital, and oratorio recordings.

He is survived by his wife Susan Crofut, his sons Daniel and Jonathan, his daughters Rachel and Emily, 14 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Our condolences to Luxon's family, friends, and colleagues.