Skovhus, Bo(je)

Skovhus, Bo(je) , admired Danish baritone; b. Århus, May 22, 1962. He received his training at the Århus Cons. (1982–86), the Royal Opera Academy in Copenhagen (1986–88), and with Oren Brown in N.Y. In 1988 he made his operatic debut as Don Giovanni at the Vienna Volksoper, which role he reprised for his first appearance at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen in 1990. In 1991 he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera as Silvio and at the Hamburg State Opera as Guglielmo. Following debuts as Billy Budd at the Cologne Opera in 1992 and as Mozart’s Almaviva at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1994, he portrayed Don Giovanni at his first appearance at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 1995. In 1997 he sang for the first time at London’s Covent Garden as Guglielmo, at the Opéra de la Bastille in Paris as Danilo, and at the San Francisco Opera as Almaviva. After singing Billy Budd at the Houston Grand Opera in 1998, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut on Dec. 24^th of that year as Eisenstein. His first engagement at the Dresden State Opera followed in 1999 as Don Giovanni. As a soloist, he appeared with the Berlin Phil., the Chicago Sym. Orch., the Vienna Sym. Orch., the Boston Sym. Orch., the Cleveland Orch., and many others. His recital engagements took him to the principal music centers on both sides of the Atlantic. Among his other roles are Hamlet, Eugene Onegin, Wolfram, Strauss’s Olivier, and Wozzeck.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire