Karl won a scholarship to The Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) and trained at The National Opera Studio, sponsored by Glyndebourne Opera. As a principal baritone he sang with English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, at The Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Glyndebourne, Opera North, The BBC PROMS, Minnesota Opera, Flemish Opera, The Netherlands Opera, Garsington Opera, and at The Chicago, Covent Garden, Dublin, Bath, Cheltenham, Wexford, Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh Festivals and with orchestras such as The Philharmonia, The Royal Philharmonic, The London Sinfonietta and The Berlin Philharmonic (under Simon Rattle).
At The Royal Variety Performance, he performed The Pirate King (Pirates of Penzance) and was twice soloist in front of 70,000 at Old Trafford. His many recordings, radio and TV appearances include two films for BBC TV, one of which won The Gramophone and Vienna TV awards and gained a Grammy nomination.
Watch Karl as ‘Sam’ in the opening scenes from the 2001 BBC film version of Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti. This video is about 9 minutes long. Karl first appears at around 2 mins 30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CThlbtcXLag
He made a special recording as a requested artist for BBC R4 Desert Island Discs, and hosted his programme for BBC Radio Wales, “Music Makers”.
Karl enjoyed nothing more than sitting at the piano for a spot of his very own brand of operatic entertainment, performing self-penned silly songs. As the co-director of ‘Opera Playhouse’ he collaborated with his friend the mezzo soprano Pippa Dames-Longworth to perform humorous reviews and takes on literature and opera. The ‘Opera Playhouse’ toured in several countries.
Watch Karl and Pippa perform a short comic song for the ‘Dickens Special’ on The Bookshow for SkyArts in 2012 with Mariella Frostrup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYu5a8v-JA
Karl regularly performed a solo show, ‘Lowering the Tone’ with songs by Coward, G&S, Lehrer, Flanders and Swann and so on at festivals, events and private parties.
Karl founded the Singing Club in 2007, not long after he moved to Chepstow. For the story of Singing Club go to our history page.
We continue a tradition started by Karl by raising money for a bursaries to help promising young musicians. Go to our bursary fund page for more information.