As Tatyana and Onegin, Krassimira Stoyanova and Simon Keenlyside sang with style, grandeur, ardour and every desirable quality.

Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, 5 February 2013

The cast is led by two outstanding artists - British baritone Simon Keenlyside and Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova…Both artists sing with exceptional imagination and commitment. 

George Hall, The Stage, 5 February 2013

… and Keenlyside, commanding the stage in voice, presence and gesture.

Andrew Clark, The Financial Times, 5 February 2013

…the singing is world class…Simon Keenlyside (Onegin) invests every note with warmth and passion.

Warwick Thompson, Bloomberg, 6 February 2013

…featuring Mr. Keenlyside as a wrenching Wozzeck. Here was harrowing music drama without benefit of a production, in a lesson for all companies about what matters most in opera. And what a one-two punch for Mr. Keenlyside.

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, 14 December 2012

…an inspired cast… dominated by Simon Keenlyside, who focused Wozzeck’s agonies, physical, mental and vocal, with poignant desperation.

Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times, 22 November 2012

And the charismatic baritone Simon Keenlyside was commanding in the role of Prospero, which he had created in the opera’s London premiere.

 

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, 14 December 2012

The baritone Simon Keenlyside, who created the role in London, reprised it at the Met, with unbroken beauty of tone and actorly attention to psychological nuance.

Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 3 December 2012

Its strongest point, as in London, is the Prospero of Simon Keenlyside, a portrayal of such magnificent completeness that it can only be compared to the greatest handful of operatic characterisations. His voice must now be at its absolute peak.

Michael Tanner, The Spectator, 17 November 2012

The cast was dominated by the Wotanesque Simon Keenlyside, who owns Prospero...

John Rockwell, Opera, December 2012

…the Met’s fantastical production, which offers a superb cast, headed by the charismatic baritone Simon Keenlyside in the role he created in London: Prospero…Mr. Keenlyside is such a grave, volatile and vocally chilling Prospero…

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, 24 October 2012

The opera truly belongs to charismatic Simon Keenlyside (Prospero)…nearly every performance he gives at this stage of his artistic evolution is unforgettably complete, vocally and theatrically.

David Patrick Stearns, WQXR, 24 October 2012

Simon Keenlyside, the original Prospero in London, sang with sensitive force, awkward range extremes notwithstanding. He also loomed and brooded magnetically, even during long stretches when he was just a passive observer.

Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times, 24 October 2012

The role was written for Simon Keenlyside, who has distinctly colored registers, his upper range warm and generous…In a cast stocked with excellent male voices, his bearing and gestures had a practiced authority.

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The Classical Review, 24 October 2012

And Keenlyside…blossomed…into a vocally authoritative presence.

 

Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, 24 October 2012

Baritone Simon Keenlyside, who created the role of Prospero, repeats it here and anchors the performance with somber dignity and strong vocalism.

Mike Silverman, Associated Press, 24 October 2012

Den wahren Erfolg dieser Produktion machte aber der Auftritt von Simon Keenlyside aus.  Sein Spiel war detailliert, sein Gesang klangschön und ausdrucksvoll… Für jeden, der Keenlysides menschliche Intepretation erleben konnte, ehe oder nachdem Sandy über New York hereinbrach, transportierte seine Darstellung auf eindrucksvolle Weise die Beschränkungen menschlicher Fähigkeiten im Angesicht des Desasters, zeigte aber auch, dass wir, wenn wir uns nur öffnen, durch Verlust Verständnis Erlangen können.

F.Plotkin, Das Opernglas, January 2013

…nicht nur stimmlich grandiose, vielmehr auch schauspielerisch differenziert Simon Keenlyside (als Rodrigo).

Ljubisa Tosic, Der Standard, 17 June 2012

Simon Keenlyside als Posa: lyrische-subtil noch im heldischen Aufbäumen gegen das Schicksal.  Der Bariton hat Kern, Kraft gewonnen, aber nichts vom edlen Ebenmaß der Linienführung verloren.

Wilhelm Sinkovicz, Die Presse, 17 June 2012

Simon Keenlyside voll Noblesse, Weltklasse.

Ernst P. Strobl, Salzburger Nachtrichten, 17 June 2012

Bei Bariton Simon Keenlyside passten Timbre und Gefühl für diese Musik, ein ganz großer Marquis Posa.

Michael Wruss, OÖNachtrichten, 18 June 2012

Simon Keenlyside…glänzt mit der eleganten Legatokultur seines sehnigen, höhensicheren Baritons.

Ernst Naredi-Rainer, Kleine Zeitung, 17 June 2012

Simon Keenlyside besticht als Marquis von Posa mit noblem Timbre, feinen Kantilenen und einer umwerfenden Todesszene…euphorische Applaus für ihn.

Gert Korentschnig, Kurier, 17 June 2012

…and Simon Keenlyside is incomparable in the arias first sung by Fischer-Diskau. Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph, 24 June 2012

Similarly, the marvellous Simon Keenlyside’s first entrance, Bugles sang, saddening the evening air, is wonderfully sung (coupled with some fine solo horn playing from Timothy Jones). Both male soloists kept me captivated at every stage, but perhaps their finest hour is their duet in the Offertorium, where Britten sets Owen’s The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, which tells of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son, Isaac. The moment where they sing of the angel appearing in order to prevent the sacrifice is simply ravishing, and sends a shiver up my spine every time I hear it. James Longstaffe, Presto Classical, 7 May 2012

Ian Bostridge and Simon Keenlyside bring all their experience to bear on the passage where two enemy soldiers are reconciled in death, but are equally vivid when jointly recounting the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Financial Times, 28/29 April 2012

Simon Keenlyside, too, is magnificent.

Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times, 15 April 2012

5 star***** - The great baritone has chosen 29 songs in some way connected with war.  Keenlyside includes all the George Butterworth Shropshire Lad songs. His singing of Vaughan Williams’s The Infinite Shining Heavens and Gurney’s In Flanders is beyond praise for its emotional restraint.  Finzi’s Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun is another tour de force of incomparable singing.  Malcolm Martineau offers supreme piano accompaniment throughout.

Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph, December 11, 2011

Top Classical album of the year, No.2 - The British baritone brings youthful vigour and vocal glamour to a moving recital, charting the lives and deaths of young men in songs by Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, Gerald Finzi and Kurt Weill.

The Sunday Times, December 11, 2011

Butterworth’s Housman setting is a marvel… it is Simon Keenlyside’s impeccable delivery that registers… A sober, intelligent CD, beautifully sung, immaculately accompanied. Keenlyside's sleeve notes are intelligent, insightful and touching.

Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk, November 26, 2011

CD of the week - The Sunday Times
A standout album of war songs that sees British baritone Simon Keenlyside utilize his youthful-sounding voice.

At 52, the British baritone is in peak vocal health, and certainly young-sounding enough to portray the men in their late teens and twenties who leave their homes and loves, never to return, in settings of war poetry or other music by composers such as George Butterworth (1885-1916) and Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), who both fought in the first world war. Keenlyside begins with John Ireland’s beloved Sea Fever, which, as he admits in his eloquent and heartfelt booklet note, is not strictly a war song, but evokes the same sense of a lad venturing into the unknown with the risk of losing love and life. It would be hard to imagine it being better sung: indeed, I can’t think of another baritone who can match him for beautiful tone, nuance of expression and immaculate diction. This sets the tone for a superb programme, incorporating Butterworth’s masterpiece, A Shropshire Lad, whose final song, Is My Team Ploughing? — a dialogue between a dead youth and the friend who has replaced him in his sweetheart’s bed — is movingly sung by Keenlyside, with Martineau wringing out the last drop of pathos in the tear-laden piano postlude. Riches here include Finzi’s Shakespeare setting Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun, Vaughan Williams’s The Vagabond, Gurney’s In Flanders and two Whitman settings by Kurt Weill, in which regret for the loss of young life mingles with rage. Keenlyside is incomparable here, in one of the song records of the year.

Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times, November 13, 2011

Despite the title, most of the songs in this admirable collection are anything but warlike. There is no place for patriotic bombast here; instead, these polished miniatures yearn for a vanished pastoral England and express nobly romantic notions of love, fidelity and the human spirit. Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Gurney, Ireland, Warlock and Somervell are all represented, but Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau do not limit themselves to England's whimsical finest, finding room for astringent examples from Ned Rorem and Kurt Weill as well. It's a beautifully judged recording, exquisitely sung; poignant but never sentimental.

 

Stephen Pritchard, The Observer, November 13, 2011

At the heart of the recital – beautifully vocalised and artlessly characterised by Keenlyside – is Butterworth’s cycle of songs under the title “A Shropshire Lad”. Here the war theme is both poignant and prescient: the A.E. Housman poems set by Butterworth are nostalgic depictions of rural life and young men’s early deaths, which won a huge resonance during the Boer War and later the first world war – the war in which Butterworth himself perished.

Andrew Clark, The Financial Times, November 5, 2011