The Composer

Finney is fortunate that his life-chances have given him great opportunities in his musical career – the composition of an opera extends his range that includes singing, conducting and arranging.

Finney has reorchestrated operas for New Palace Opera, including The Marriage of Figaro, Hansel and Gretel, Massenet’s La Navaraisse, Oedipus Rex. For Fulham Opera, he reorchestrated Die fliegende Holländer and Die Meistersinger; he also shared conducting honours for Holländer. In 2020 he completed a commission for a chamber version of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle.

As a singer, Finney began, as many do, as a baritone, before graduating to singing as a tenor. His performed roles include Parsifal (2005/06/12), Loge Das Rheingold (2004/05/08/14/19/21), Tristan (2005/10/13), Siegmund Die Walküre (2006/09/12/13), Siegfried (2007/08/10/11/13/14), Tannhäuser (2011/16), Walther von Stolzing Die Meistersinger (2007/14), Apollo Daphne (2006), Der Kaiser Die Frau ohne Schatten (2015/19), Herod Salome (2014/18), Levko May Night (Rimsky-Korsakov) (2006), Boris and Tikhon Katya Kabanova (2009/10), Luka From the House of the Dead (2104), Aeneas Dido & Aeneas (2008), Quint The Turn of the Screw (2018/19), Male Chorus The Rape of Lucretia (2021) and Eisenstein Die Fledermaus (2016). He has appeared with Scottish Opera, Garsington Opera, Longborough Festival Opera, Fulham Opera, Northern Wagner Orchestra, Skipton Camerata, Childwickbury Arts Fair and Edinburgh Opera Players.

In concert and recital, he has appeared at St George’s Bristol, St John’s Smith Square, Adrian Boult Hall Birmingham, Royal Albert Hall, Corpus Christi College Cambridge and St Martin-in-the-Fields. Concert repertoire includes: the masses of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn; The Creation and The Seasons; Elijah and St Paul; the major choral works of Elgar, Britten’s War Requiem and St Nicholas; Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Photograph: Jack Hobbs

SINGING

… the real sensation was a concert presentation of Die Walküre Act 1 … Superb in the role of Siegmund was tenor Jonathan Finney.

Jonathan Finney, resplendent as Loge … acted the changeable fire-god with sophisticated energy. In Götterdämmerung … Jonathan Finney, a louche Loge in Das Rheingold, was another excellent Siegfried ... His gradual realisation, just before his death, of his love for Brünnhilde was truly beautiful.

Jonathan Finney … impressed with the clarity of his singing as Loge who was somewhat more thoughtful and less playful than some are. Jonathan Finney acquitted himself well as Siegfried and his final lines as he dies had tremendous pathos.

Jonathan Finney was magnificent in the dual roles of the nonchalant Prologue and the evil Quint, his crisp tenor ranging from light, free-flowing melismas … to snarling fury ... He should consider singing more of the roles Britten wrote for Peter Pears.

Orchestral arranging

Most impressive of all was the conducting of Ben Woodward who … led a remarkably vibrant – and authentic-sounding – account of the reduced score ... That so much justice was done to Wagner’s music, including his great choral writing, was because of Jonathan Finney as arranger and chorus master. There is no reason why his new version cannot have a life beyond these Fulham Opera performances in a similar way to Jonathan Dove’s chamber version of the Ring.

… using the palette available to him, [Finney] has succeeded very well. Almost all of Wagner’s sounds are there but in a smaller form.

Finney’s intelligent arrangement of the score … subtly smuggles a few extra treats from other works for Wagner enthusiasts.

[Finney explained] he considered it was virtually a lost cause to attempt to replicate Wagner’s sound-world ... Yet that is precisely what he did achieve.

Conducting

… Palace Opera ensemble produced some of the best Wagner I have heard during similar performances (Grange Park Opera, Longborough, Saffron Opera and Rehearsal Orchestra) … Finney – whose conducting style is quite dynamic – led the orchestral players in a performance that articulated the textures of the score with a clarity that was astonishing.

[Under] the indefatigable tenor-conductor Jonathan Finney … the orchestral standard was so high that I was convinced that they must be wholly or largely professional. I was flabbergasted to learn that the ratio was professionals: 2, amateurs: 70! Finney can be justly proud of his evening’s work.

A Kind Man: An Opera of Resilience, Love, and Miraculous Redemption. Contact us to discuss licensing A Kind Man.

The Composer

SINGING

Orchestral arranging

Conducting

Additional Pages

Opera Overview