Born in Voorburg, the Netherlands, just outside of The Hague, Philip
van Lidth de Jeude came to the U.S. with his parents and his younger
brother, Erland, in 1958. He began studying piano at age seven and sang
in choruses throughout his childhood. His first acting experience was
in a school production of You Can't Take It With You, and his first
experience in music theater was as Harry McAfee in Bye Bye, Birdie.
After graduating from Ridgefield High School in Ridgefield, CT, he
studied voice at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, receiving
his Master of Music in Voice from Manhattan School of Music. During
this time, he gained experience in musicals both as singer/actor and as
Music Director/ Conductor, and he made his professional operatic debut
in 1974. He joined the ensemble of the Lyric Opera School, now the Ryan
Opera Center, in 1979, participating in various productions of the
Lyric Opera of Chicago, before beginning a free-lance career as a
baritone, singing with Michigan Opera Theater, Providence Opera
Theater, New Jersey State Opera, Pennsylvania Opera Theater, Regina
Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, among others in roles such as Marcello in La
Boheme, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Ben Hubbard in Regina, Miecznik
in The Haunted Castle (U.S. Premiere) and Baritone I in Martyrdom of
St. Magnus.
After making his transition from baritone to dramatic tenor, he made
his European debut at Zurich Opera in December 1986. Soon afterward he
was engaged for the title role in the German Premiere of Lorenzo
Ferrerro's Salvatore Giuliano in Wurzburg. Since then he has sung at
Deutsche Oper Berlin, Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Bavarian
State Theater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, State Theater in Oldenburg,
Spanga Summer Opera Festival, Eutin Opera Festival in the Castle
Gardens, Landestheater Detmold, Theater Vorpommern (Stralsund &
Greifswald), United Municipal Theaters of Krefeld and Mönchengladbach,
Nuremberg, Münster, Wuppertal and Frankfurt/Oder as Otello, Herodes,
Canio and Peter Grimes, among many others. During the summer of 1995 he
sang the role of Samson (Samson et Dalila) at Stifting Spanga in the
Netherlands to critical acclaim. In 1997, he was cast as the
Generalissimo in Abeltje, which was premiered in November 1998 and has
been cited as one of the most successful Dutch films of recent years.
Since then he has taught as Assistant Professor of Music at a college
in the Midwest and is ABD for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at UNCG
in North Carolina, where he makes his home in Cary and teaches voice and piano
at at the Music School of Cary. While he has retired from the stage, he continues to
appear in concert and recital from time to time, such as in New York
City, where he joined his sister, Philine van Lidth de Jeude, in a
recital in which, for the first time in history, Wagner's twins,
Siegmund and Sieglinde, were sung by a real brother and sister team.
