Michael Steffan

Baritone

Michael Steffan is a founder member of Cantabile. He was born and brought up in Cardiff, then went up to Cambridge, where he read Modern and Mediæval Languages. He subsequently returned to Cardiff to study at the Welsh College of Music and Drama, and continued his vocal training with the eminent German baritone, Gerhard Hüsch and later with Laura Sarti. He has also studied with Hugues Cuénod and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Since Cantabile became a full-time concern in 1982, Michael Steffan's CV reads almost identically with that of the group, with whom he has travelled extensively, singing in an enormous variety of prestigious events and venues around the world.

As a soloist outside Cantabile, Michael has sung much of the standard bass and baritone concert and oratorio repertoire, from Handel and Bach to Brahms and Orff. He has also appeared with The Singers Company, and sang the rôle of Æneas in a performance of Dido and Æneas to inaugurate the new theatre at St. Paul's Girls' School in London, before the Queen Mother. On the recital platform he has sung Beethoven, Schumann and Mahler with pianist Malcolm Martineau. In quite a different field, he has written and performed several titles on CDs in the Voices series for the Atlantic 7 label.

Amongst the many highlights of his career with Cantabile he includes being invited to sing privately for Herbert von Karajan, being awarded First prize in the Eurovision International Star Festival, recording a single with Tim Rice and logging the highest-ever performance by a vocal group in a hot-air balloon.

Michael Steffan is married to soprano Katherine Steffan, and they have two children: Laurie, aged fifteen, and James, nine. They live between Richmond Park and the River Thames in Mortlake, within a stone's throw of the end of the course of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.