Black and white headshot of Patrick Keefe

Patrick Alexander Keefe

Baritone

Upcoming at ENO: The Marquis La traviata; Fiorello The Barber of Seville

In the ENO’s 23/24 season Patrick joins the English National Opera as a Harewood Artist.

Winner of Glyndebourne’s John Christie Award 2022, First Prize in the 2021 Richard Lewis-Jean Shanks Award, Second Prize in the 2021 Pavarotti Prize, and The Musicians’ Company Prudi Hoggarth Audience Prize, Patrick is an emerging British-Irish baritone.

In 2022-2023 he was a Jerwood Young Artist at  Glyndebourne Festival Opera and recently graduated from the Opera course at the Royal Academy of Music. He has been supported by The Countess of Munster Trust​, the Josephine Baker Trust, the John Baker Award for Opera, and D’Oyly Carte Memorial/Fordyce Awards.

He was a Help Musicians Sybil Tutton Award holder for 2021-2022, and is both a Musician’s Company Young Artist and an Opera Prelude Young Artist.

Before Royal Academy Opera, he studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the University of Oxford.

Career Highlights

His principal study teachers have included Mark Wildman, Robert Dean, Jonathan Lemalu, Alexander Ashworth, Glenville Hargreaves, Giles Underwood, and Andrew Kidd. He has been delighted to participate in masterclasses with Sir Thomas Allen, Brindley Sherratt, Christopher Purves, Kamal Khan, Dame Emma Kirkby, Richard Burkhard, David Stout, Jonathon Swinard, Stephen Langridge, Katie Mitchell, and Jane Glover. He is also grateful to have had coachings from baritones Etienne Dupuis and Yuriy Yurchuk. His Principal Study Coach is Jonathan Papp.

Patrick recently performed Il Conte in Le Nozze di Figaro on the Glyndebourne Tour, following on from his debut singing The Notary and covering Dottore Malatesta in Don Pasquale during the 2022 Festival.

At RAO, Patrick’s roles included the title role in Gianni Schicchi, Musiklehrer in the Prologue to Strauss’ Ariade auf Naxos, Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the summer of 2021, Patrick sang Don Parmenione in Rossini’s L’occasione fa il ladro for British Youth Opera at Opera Holland Park.

Before London, Patrick spent four years at the University of Oxford, completing a Bachelors degree in Music and a Masters in Composition, his second study, which he passed with distinction. For examples of his work, please see the Composition page. He began a doctorate in the discipline at New College, Oxford, before being advised by industry professionals that the time was right to focus on his singing. He remains active as a composer in his spare time and has hopes of resuming his DPhil at some point in the future.

Whilst at Oxford, he was a choral scholar, and later Peter Phillips Scholar, in the Choir of Merton College. He appeared with them as a soloist numerous times in concert, on disc, and on Radio 3, including for the first Anglican Evensong at St. Peter’s, Vatican City. His solo on their 2018 release was commended by Gramophone and BBC Music magazines. He was also a member of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford.

He maintains a busy choral and oratorio schedule alongside operatic singing, with recent highlights including the bass solos in the opening gala of the Vache Baroque Festival alongside Nick Pritchard and Helen Charlston, bass solos in Bach’s B Minor Mass at St. John’s Smith Square alongside Mary Bevan, Christus (St. John Passion) for Shrewsbury Abbey and Zebul (Jeptha) at Oxford University Church, alongside James Gilchrist in the title role. In Oxford he has sung as a lay clerk for the Oxford Oratory, Christ Church Cathedral, and Pusey House, and performed for many of the college choirs as well as the Oxford Bach Soloists, Vespri Segreti, and Fount and Origin.

In London he has performed with the BBC Singers and the London Symphony Chorus, and deputises for the Brompton Oratory, the Carmelite Priory, Kensington, St James’s Spanish Place, St. Luke’s Chelsea, and St. John’s Hyde Park.

Last updated: 20th September 2023