Allan Clayton: ‘I’m your tortured tenor for hire’

His committed performances and expressive voice have made him one of today’s most admired singers. As he prepares for Jephtha at Covent Garden, Allan Clayton ponders creativity, pigeonholes and facial hair

Allan Clayton rarely makes it to the curtain call. The roles the tenor has made his own in recent years – Britten’s tormented fisherman Peter Grimes; Jim Mahoney, sentenced to execution in Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; Berlioz’s overreaching and damned scholar Faust, and of course the very template of the tragic hero, Hamlet himself, in Brett Dean’s acclaimed 2017 opera, all come to untimely ends.

Critics hail the raw intensity of his committed performances. “Clayton makes a heartbreaking Grimes, singing with remarkable sensitivity,” wrote Tim Ashley in the Guardian. “[He] whips his head around with widened, piercing eyes, never at peace … his tone conveys bitterness and pain as his face betrays fits of rage and shock. His mad scene is a thing of terror and wonder,” said the New York Times.