Barry Banks

“Barry Banks displayed both clarion top notes and gravelly low ones for the title role's impossibly wide tessitura.” (Mitridate - Bayerische Staatsoper - Opera Magazine - October 2011)

“Equally powerful is Barry Banks's hot and red-blooded Edgardo, not the conventional operatic hero but a wild Border laird in plaid, who reminds us in the final act that this is really an opera with a tenor as well as a soprano mad scene. On this showing, Banks ranks in the top class of Italian-style lyric tenors – every phrase beautifully projected, clarion-toned and technically secure.”  (The Daily Telegraph, February 2010)

“Barry Banks’ splendid Almaviva. Fearless top notes and agility join with real humor and a comfortable physical presence.”  (Classics Today, November 2009)

“Barry Banks, that most elegant of top-altitude tenors, demonstrated virtuosic refinement as her lover, Carlo.”  (Financial Times, July 2007)

“If the performance had a hero, it was Barry Banks. As Uberto, he sailed the tenor stratosphere with nonchalant elegance, articulated the fiorature with communicative grace and acted with dignified urgency.”  (Financial Times, March 2007)