Terje Stensvold is represented by Rayfield Allied in the UK & Sundry.

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Terje Stensvold

Baritone

  • towering above everyone on stage, [Terje Stensvold's Scarpia] embodied the cruelty and rough sensuality of the corrupt police chief, while singing the music in a seductive legato...
    Sunday Times
  • Terje Stensvold’s Pizarro was sensational, oozing malevolence in his aria...
    Opera Magazine
  • Stensvold’s Scarpia is outstandingly well-sung and played...
    Sunday Times

  • Terje Stensvold studied in Norway, London, Berlin and Budapest From 1972 to 1999 he was a member of the Norwegian National Opera performing over seventy diverse roles including Bartolo (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Klingsor (Parsifal), Scarpia (Tosca), Enrico (Lucia di Lammermoor), Escamillo (Carmen), Danilo (Die lustige Witwe), Jochanaan (Salome), Iago (Otello) for which he was awarded ‘Singer of the Year’ award from the Norwegian Opera Society and the title roles in Eugene Onegin, Don Giovanni, Gianni Schicchi, Der fliegende Holländer and Le Nozze di Figaro.
     
    After marking his 25th anniversary at the Norwegian National Opera in the 1997/98 season Terje Stensvold suddenly embarked on a wider international career starting with his UK debut as Scarpia for Scottish Opera and progressing with the title role in Der fliegende Holländer for the Frankfurt Opera, Scarpia in Stuttgart, Holländer in Wiesbaden and at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Balstrode in Peter Grimes, Alfio and Tonio in Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagiliacci, Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten and Dr. Schoen in Lulu in Frankfurt, Pizarro in Fidelio at the Opera de Monte Carlo and under Riccardo Muti for La Scala and Der Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte and Pizarro at Covent Garden.

    Beginning in 2005, he has sung all three Wotans in the new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen for the Royal Opera, Stockholm. He also sang Pizarro in Edinburgh and at the Barbican, London (under Sir Charles Mackerras) and Jochanaan in Salome at the Staatsoper, Berlin, Creon in Oedipus Rex at the Edinburgh Festival, Balstrode for the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels, Barak in Hamburg and Amsterdam, Jochanaan at the Vienna State Opera and Filippo II in Don Carlos in the opening season of the new opera house in Oslo and Toronto. His recording of the title role in Der fliegende Holländer appeared in 2005.

    Terje Stensvold is represented in the UK & Sundry by Robert Slotover at Rayfield Allied.
    This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.

    • Don Pizarro in Fidelio: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
      (May / June 2007)

      Norwegian baritone Terje Stensvold as the prison governer is excellent...
      Music OMH
      ...Terje Stensvold boomed away successfully...
      MusicalCriticism.com
      ...impressive...
      The Guardian
      Terje Stensvold’s imposing Don Pizarro...
      The Times
      Terje Stensvold's Pizarro, cast as besuited Ruhr industrialist - think Thyssen or Krupp - had bullying menace.
      Evening Standard
      Terje Stensvold captures well the black-hearted, ruthless character of Don Pizarro - whether as a cigar-smoking business-suited mogul or a military-uniform-clad megalomaniac. At the curtain calls, Stensvold suggested himself as gregarious and generous - quite the reverse of Don Pizarro. Now, that's fine acting, and his singing is suitably gravely and imperious.
      Opera Critic

    • Die Walkure (Wotan): Royal Opera Stockholm
      (March 2006)

      Terje Stensvold made a deep impression as Wotan in Das Rheingold in September. He impresses even more here, expressing all the different facets of Wotan’s character: his pride, his pretensions, his anger, his indecisiveness. Vocally he is superb. He has an ideal Wotan voice, a true bass-baritone with lots of power, not a hint of unsteadiness or widened vibrato and an impressive stamina. In the final scene of act III his love and care for Brünnhilde is deeply moving, singing the weakest of pianissimos with great beauty.
      Seen and Heard

    • Fidelio (Pizarro), Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Barbican
      (October 2005)

      Terje Stensvold’s Pizarro was sensational, oozing malevolence in his aria with the back-up of Mackerras’s snarling brass, and a really creepy ‘smiling damned villain’ in the duet with Rocco.
      Opera
      Strain was not a problem for the Norwegian baritone Terje Stensvold, who injected potent malignity in Pizzaro’s “Ha, welch ein Augenblick”, as far removed from boo-hiss villainy as it’s possible to be.
      Sunday Telegraph
      From an on the whole well-chosen cast, Christine Brewer’s gloriously sung Leonore and Terje Stensvold’s malevolent Don Pizarro stood out...
      Sunday Times
      ...and Terje Stensvold a powerful Pizarro.
      The Observer
      ...the sturdy baritone of Terje Stensvold emerged with credit from the hardly less gratifying role of Pizarro.
      Financial Times
      The surprise of the evening, and the big spark which drove things into a higher gear, was Terje Stensvold, a Scandinavian baritone of whom we should hear more. He was a knock-out as the prisoner governor, Pizarro, and his exciting opening aria drew the first applause of the night.
      Music OMH
      And Mackerras excitingly exploited the pitting of their fortitude against the monolith of oppression incarnate in Terje Stensvold’s magnificent Pizarro.
      The Times

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