Damien Top

Vocals, Musical Artist

1963 –

72

Who is Damien Top?

Damien Top is a French tenor, musicologist and conductor, and is artistic director of the International Albert Roussel Festival.

Damien Top is one of the world’s most distinguished exponents of contemporary French music as singer, conductor, composer and musicologist. Honored by the French government in 2002 with the prestigious "Prix Charles Oulmont - Fondation de France" for his outstanding contributions to French culture, he serves as artistic director for the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, which he represents throughout the world in recitals and recordings.

Graduate of the Conservatoire of Lille and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Damien Top studied with Galina Vishnevskaya, Jean-Christophe Benoit and Jacques Pottier. He has appeared in opera, operetta, and sacred works, as well as performing the entire range of French mélodie. In 1993, he was engaged by the Opéra de Paris-Bastille to sing in a new production of Benvenuto Cellini by Berlioz under the direction of Myung-whun Chung. In 2002, Damien Top sang and conducted the cantata L'oiseau a vu tout cela by Sauguet at the Académie Française.

Many distinguished contemporary composers have created works for him, including Jacques Chailley, who has proclaimed, "...l'art de Damien Top est exemplaire," as well as Isabelle Aboulker, Françoise Choveaux, Suzanne Joly, Alain Feron, Wally Karveno, Philippe Malhaire, Max Pinchard, Jean-Christophe Rosaz; the American Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee, Joni Greene, Isaac Schankler, the New Zealander Edwin Carr, the Dutch composer Harry Cox, the Rumanian Horia Surianu and the Australians Houston Dunleavy, Peter Tahourdin, Robert Trumble and Felix Werder. Top has recorded Massenet song cycles, romances of de Coussemaker, art songs of Émile Goué and melodies of Claude Guillon-Verne, nephew of Jules Verne. “Diapason magazine” lauded him for his “impeccable taste.”

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Born
Jul 13, 1963
Rouen
Also known as
  • Top, Damien
Nationality
  • France

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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