Neal Davies is among Britain's most prominent bass-baritone singers. His repertory extends into opera, choral music, and vocal music, from the Baroque era to the present day. Davies was born in 1967 in Newport, Wales, near Cardiff, in the United Kingdom. At school there, he enjoyed singing Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, and he enrolled for music studies at King's College, London, and the Royal Academy of Music. Davies attracted the attention of the soprano Dame Gwyneth Jones, who arranged for his further studies at the International Opera Studio in Zurich, Switzerland. He entered the Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff in 1991 and won the Lieder Prize. That might have been a big breakthrough, but instead, the 24-year-old departed for a two-and-a-half-year stint with the Coburg Opera in Germany; he later recalled that he gained ...