Baritone Jonathan Sells was born in South London in 1982. After studying Music and Musicology at Cambridge University, he completed the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (studying with Janice Chapman), where he won the Glass Sellers’ Rose Bowl for the Gold Medal Competition. In 2009 he took first prize at the Thelma King Vocal Awards, was awarded the Prix Thierry Mermod for singers at the Verbier Festival Academy as well as the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Silver Medal, and won the Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize.

He is currently a member of the International Opera Studio in Zürich. Jonathan divides his time between operatic, concert, and song repertoire. Recent operatic engagements include cover Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte (Glyndebourne Festival Opera), Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Verbier Festival Academy), Pastore IV and Spirito III in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Teatro Real, Madrid) and Hérault and Apollon in Gluck’s Alceste (Chelsea Opera Group). On the concert platform he has explored a great deal of 17th- and 18th-century repertoire, including Plutone in Monteverdi’s Ballo dell’ingrate (recorded for Chandos with I Fagiolini), Bach and Handel with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and various projects with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, whose ‘Jardin des Voix’ Jonathan joined in 2007. His recital repertoire includes Schubert’s Winterreise, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire and Schumann’s Dichterliebe. In 2010 Jonathan opened the London Song Festival and made his full Wigmore Hall debut with a programme of song from the 1880s.