Born in Wellington, Shropshire, England on March 21, 1935, Nigel Rogers was a virtuoso tenor, conductor, and British pedagogue. He was responsible for founding the Studio der Frühen Musik and the Ensemble Chiaroscuro and promoted the rediscovery of early music. His father was a singer, and his mother was a pianist, who taught him the basics of the instrument. Nigel Rogers studied at King's College Cambridge and sang in the choir (1953-1956), then in Rome, Milan and at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich (1959-1961), where he co-founded - with Thomas Binkley, Sterling Jones, and Andrea von Ramm - the Studio der Frühen Musik, the pioneering ensemble known for their interpretation of early music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Nigel Rogers made operatic debut in Amsterdam. His most popular role was as the lead role in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in the opera of the same name by Monteverdi. He also performed arias by Dowland, Purcell, d'India, Caccini, Frescobaldi, and Lawes as well as Bach cantatas with Barbara Schlick. A professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 1978, he founded the Chiaroscuro Ensemble the following year to perform Italian Baroque music. Throughout his career, Nigel Rogers has collaborated with many renowned performers, musicians, and groups. On May 3, 2005, his 70th birthday was celebrated with a recital at Wigmore Hall in London. Nigel Rogers died on January 19, 2022, at the age of 86. He leaves behind a large catalog of releases including Bach: Cantatas No. 10 & No. 47 (1965), The King's Musick aus der Zeit Henry VIII (1974), Purcell: Songs (1977), Bach: Cantatas Nos. 170 & 177 (1981), Dowland: Songs for Tenor and Lute (1988), Schütz: Symphoniae Sacrae Op. 10 (1994), and Canti Gregoriani - Il Vespro della Beata Vergine (2012).
![John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" (Overture and Music Harmonized by Johann Christoph Pepusch) [Ed. Denis Stevens]](https://cdn-images.dzcdn.net/images/cover/43ad1cf7d516249ee856725ad67b83cd/120x120-000000-80-0-0.jpg)