Biography
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.
