The ENO’s strong cast includes Rosie Aldrich, Kenneth Kellogg and Mark Le Brocq as Begbick, Moses and Fatty, the founders of Mahagonny. Simon O’Neill as the lumberjack Jimmy MacIntyre and others also sing excellently.

The Article (February 2026)

...sparks magnificently against Mark Le Brocq's Fatty the Bookkeepers' all blazing tenor and New Jersey-accented chaos.

Scene Mag (February 2026)

Other excellent contributions from Kenneth Kellogg (Trinity Moses), Mark Le Brocq (Fatty the Bookkeeper)...

Standard (February 2026)

Kenneth Kellogg and Mark Le Brocq do well as her miscreant associates, Trinity Moses and Fatty the Bookkeeper.

The Stage (February 2026)

From the very start, however, the strength of the cast shines through, with the trio of fugitives and quartet of Alaskans all working well together. Rosie Aldridge is quite a formidable Begbick and Mark Le Brocq an astutely observed Fatty

Opera Online (February 2026)

...and Mark Le Brocq, all offered individual performances founded on the text and on a recognition that the text has contradictions of its own, not least between words and music.

Seen and Heard (February 2026)

The minor roles in Albert Herring are no less convincingly played. Mr Upfold, the Mayor in a tweed suit and maroon bow tie, is played by tenor Mark Le Brocq, his punchy tenor exploding into outbursts of pomposity.

London Unattached (October 2025)

Marc Le Brocq persuades as the pompous Mayor Mr Upfold, who turns in a glorious patter song praising the wisdom of Lady Billows

Opera Today (October 2025)

Mark Le Brocq had great fun with Mr Upfold's prosy nature, always keen to overdo things. I particularly liked Le Brocq's gloriously over the top account of Mr Upfold's contribution to the Act Three threnody.

Planet Hugill (October 2025)

There was also a spivvy mayor selling black market silk stockings from Mark Le Brocq who sang and acted impressively once again.

Seen and Heard (October 2025)

But belly laughs are not what Britten was going for: as ever, he was more interested in hypocritical humanity, and his chequered cast give finely drawn performances across the board – from Mark Le Brocq’s mayor, doing a clandestine trade in silk stockings...

Guardian (October 2025)

From among the ensemble cast there are a wealth of excellent performances, ranging from Mark Le Brocq’s comically upstanding Mr Upfold...

Opera Online (October 2025)

Her underlings (as she would see them) were given equally well-defined interpretations by a sterling ensemble of Carolyn Dobbin, Aoife Miskelly, Eddie Wade, Andri Björn Róbertsson and, as the village butcher, Welsh National Opera's Aschenbach, Mark Le Brocq

Opera with Opera News (January 2026)

What the production did was form a superb setting for Mark Le Brocq's marvellously communicative Grimes. Having heard him as Aschenbach in Death in Venice with WNO last year [see my review] it was wonderful to get to hear him exploring a role from the other end of Britten's career. For 'The Great Bear' sequence in Act One and the Mad Scene in Act Three, Le Brocq found a magical head voice that seduced in just the right way, conveying the mystical sense that is part of Grimes. But there is also a dramatic edge to Le Brocq's voice, bringing out Grimes' anger and frustration.

This was not a soft-edged, sympathetic performance, in many ways Le Brocq's Grimes was not likeable, but we completely understood and by the end we sympathised.

Planet Hugill (July 2025)

...a monumental Grimes from Le Brocq.

Critics Circle (July 2025)

...led by Mark Le Brocq, an experienced Britten tenor whose Aschenbach in Death in Venice for Welsh National Opera last year won plaudits all round. He was equally impressive here, a craggy loner whohad clearly been stigmatized by his fellows for years. Angry, sad and repressed, this Grimes was a ticking timebomb dangerously near the end of his tether. Vocally he brought enormous reserves of power and stamina to the role, mining the text for all it was worth and landing the top notes whether singing at full throttle or sotto voce.

Musical America (July 2025)

The deluded fervour first of the Wagnerites and then of Mark Le Brocq’s Chamberlain – simply a tour de force – is monstrous.

The Guardian (May 2025)

But the looming Wagner is not Wahnfried’s main character. That’s Houston Stewart Chamberlain, excellently sung by Mark Le Brocq, a bumbling, butterfly-hunting British outsider who becomes an influential insider, welcomed for his horrific antisemitism.

The Times (May 2025)

Marc Le Brocq triumphs in the demanding central role of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman who ingratiated himself into the Wagner family. With his frothing anti-Semitism and fanatical belief in German superiority, Chamberlain helped cement the bond between Wagner’s music and Hitler, who appears as a character near the opera’s end, and laid the basis for the family’s Succession-like power struggle that played out for decades.

The Stage (May 2025)

In the central role, Mark Le Brocq – a Chamberlain Doppelgänger – sang tirelessly, his tenor sounding robust.

Bachtrack (May 2024)

Mark Le Brocq brilliantly articulates Chamberlain’s struggling, insecure search for meaning, not unlike one of Britten’s tragic protagonists (carrying over not a little of his masterly realisation of Aschenbach for WNO’s Death in Venice). He delineates every nuance from doubt and hesitation when he’s derided by the Wagnerians as a curious, priggish Englishman on a working holiday to Germany as an entomologist, to chauvinist certainty once he’s become an adopted German and married one of Wagner’s daughters.

Opera Today (May 2025)

Following memorable performances last year in Welsh National Opera’s Death in Venice and as LFO’s Siegmund, Mark Le Brocq gives a brilliant depiction of Chamberlain as a failing bug-hunter, author of an authoritative tome on anti-Semitism and scientific racism, influencing a young Hitler and becoming known as Hitler’s John the Baptist.

Seen & Heard (May 2025)

Mark Le Brocq provides a brilliant portrayal of this vicious and supercilious man.

The Article (June 2025)

Houston himself (and yes, someone did actually say 'Houston, we have a problem') was a gift of a role for the tenor Mark Le Brocq, who ate it up and belched it out with gusto. Le Brocq was perhaps too sympathetic for the character he played-a two-dimensional piece of theatre demanded something less subtle-but he gave the opera its centre and, for better or worse, its heart.

Opera Magazine (Septembern 2026 )

Mark Le Brocq's impish Loge and then his lyrical Siegmund (a remarkable feat this, as the roles' vocal demands are so very different)...

Opera (June 2024)

Mark Le Brocq is an imposing Siegmund

The Stage (June 2024)

Rarely has the Act II exchange between the Valkyrie, Brünnhilde (the powerful and unflappable Lee Bisset) and the Wälsung twins, Siegmund (Mark Le Brocq, ardent and tender) and Sieglinde (Emma Bell, fearless in vocal strength), felt so intense.

Guardian (June 2024)

Act 1 was the strongest. Mark Le Brocq was a compelling Siegmund, more the rough man of the forest that his backstory describes and less the noble knight errant that is often portrayed, closer in temperament to Hunding than anyone might like to admit. Sparks flew between him and Emma Bell’s dramatically sung Sieglinde.

But Die Walküre is an opera that can spring surprises on you no matter how often you see it. Here, one scene made more impact on me than ever before: Le Brocq’s “So grüße mir Walhall, grüße mir Wotan” when he explains to Lee Bisset’s Brünnhilde – his voice honeyed, his mood one of wistful resignation – that he rejects the delights of Valhalla and its wish-maidens, if Sieglinde cannot be there with him. As Brünnhilde gains the understanding of human love that has previously been alien to her, this was the emotional highlight of the evening.

BachTrack (June 2024)

a very fine Mark Le Brocq

The Article (June 2024)

Mark Le Brocq’s slippery Loge who, with his crimson frockcoat, sunglasses and twirling cane, amuses as much as he unsettles.

Siegmund (a vividly projected Mark Le Brocq)... These transformative episodes are amongst the evening’s most emotionally charged – the developing feelings and knowing glances between Le Brocq and Bell bringing a tour de force of accumulating passion where, musically speaking, stage and pit are in perfect alignment, singers and players working together as a single unified body, with Negus generating sublime music making for some forty minutes, the emotional temperature far into the red.

Opera Today (June 2024)

Marc Le Brocq sang Siegmund with a handsome tenor and excellent control, and he also made a charismatic Loge.

Classical Voice America (June 2024)

Longborough’s demanding rehearsal plans denied Welsh National Opera’s Death in Venice the services of Mark Le Brocq in Birmingham, in the leading role as Gustav von Aschenbach. How good to hear him at Longborough as Loge, a role which gives him the opportunity to use his compelling tenor voice and acting abilities

Seen and Heard (June 2024)

Aschenbach was the final operatic role Britten wrote for his lifelong partner, tenor Peter Pears, and from an artistic point of view it remains one of the most demanding of them all. In essaying it for the first time, Mark Le Brocq shows his mettle physically, as well as vocally, seizing the opportunity to claim his place within a distinguished line of the part’s interpreters.

Doubtless Le Brocq will take it further, but his is already a remarkable assumption at the epicentre of a show that, taken as a whole, reveals the company’s capabilities at their outstanding best.

The Stage (March 2024)

Based on Thomas Mann’s novella, the work makes huge demands on the tenor singing the role of Gustav von Aschenbach – heroically sung here by Mark Le Brocq.

A strong presence throughout, Le Brocq conveys in both deeply sympathetic voice and in body language Aschenbach’s anguish.

Guardian (March 2024)

As Aschenbach, Mark Le Brocq continually commands the stage, more the English gentleman than the feverish writer of the original story, buffeted by the dubious characters from gondolier to hotel manager to barber whom he meets on his travels.

Telegraph (March 2024)

And, at the centre, fine individual performances. Mark Le Brocq is a washed-up Aschenbach who persuasively disintegrates from buttoned-up prude to dishevelled voyeur.

Times (March 2024)

Le Brocq's Aschenbach, tall, lumbering and snatched from a dusty library, sang Britten’s secco recitatives with a cerebral clarity

BachTrack (March 2024)

Mark LeBrocq’s interpretation of the role of Gustav von Eschenbach (much the largest in the opera) was commanding, while being shot through with the character’s self-doubt. He was thoroughly assured in the passages of recitative and Sprechstimme and psychologically convincing at all times – producing a vocally lucid and emotionally coherent account of von Eschenbach’s unrelenting self-awareness and its associated inhibitions; he presented von Eschenbach’s vanity and occasional pomposity with a degree of sympathy, creating a plausibly complex human being.

Seen and Heard (March 2024)

In what is largely a dramatic monologue Mark Le Brocq was vocally splendid and sympathetic to the role Gustav von Aschenbach. It isn’t an easy one but there was plenty of angst, periodic rhapsody balanced with despair and maybe enough self-disgust.

South Wales Argus (March 2024)

He is rarely off stage, and in the WNO’s production Mark Le Brocq was outstanding in this role

The Article (March 2024)

The astute choice of Mark Le Brocq as Aschenbach alone would have carried the show. This versatile and reliable British tenor has taken so many roles of every scale and kind over the years, his gifts may have been taken for granted. Vocally secure throughout (he is rarely off stage), he acts with courageous stillness and nuance, emphasising his character’s inner conflict and frailty.

The Observer (March 2024)

Le Brocq is absolutely exceptional, by the way: one of those anti-virtuosic virtuoso performances where the artist vanishes so completely inside the character that it almost feels tactless to mention the technical niceties – his bleached, aching tone; the way it loosens and ripens as Aschenbach loses his grip, and the exemplary clarity and sensitivity with which Le Brocq articulates the text

The Spectator (March 2024)

Such technical prowess needed to be reflected in the voices of the singers. As Aschenbach, Mark Le Brocq gave a poised performance, expressing the torment first of dried-up inspiration then of the inaccessibility of the figure who might change his fate. The clarity of Le Brocq’s diction and his eloquent control of Britten’s arching phrases were matched by a focused stage presence that was all the more important given the extra distractions elsewhere.

Opera (May 2024)

In the principal role, Mark Le Brocq achieves just the right balance of vanity and vulnerability. Surtitles are provided, but his crystal-clear diction renders them superfluous.

Opera Today (March 2024)

Attention is compelled by Le Brocq’s effortless, fluid delivery of the vocal part, given the naturalness and nuance of speech in what consistently remains a recitative or, at most, an arioso-like setting by Britten, firmly dictated by the latent music and rhythm of the libretto’s words in the words (it’s interesting that Britten kept Aschenbach as a writer, rather than turning him into the Mahler-like composer of Visconti’s film). Like the novels of Henry James (another artistic figure influenced by Venice) where the person of any narrator becomes essentially dissolved in the re-telling of the story itself, so here Le Brocq’s embodiment of Mann’s writer in the opera makes him an effectively passive conduit for the haunting sights and experiences of the Venetian lagoon.

Classical Source (April 2024)

Mark Le Brocq made an excellent Sailor in Act I and later gave a strong portrayal of Tristan’s erstwhile friend, the treacherous Melot.

The Article (June 2023)

Mark Le Brocq is menacingly memorable

Times (June 2023)

and Mark Le Brocq creepily distasteful (in character, not voice) as Melot, the supporting cast has no weakness

Observer (June 2023)

It demands uniform excellence of acting from its eleven singers to draw you into the story and that’s exactly what director Olivia Fuchs gets from her cast, starting from Mark LeBrocq as the solicitor’s clerk, Vitek...

BachTrack

An audience unfamiliar with the opera can be excused for finding it baffling without paying close attention to the surtitles, so it was an excellent idea for Mark Le Brocq to appear stage front during the scene change from Act 1 to 2 to explain the background. Le Brocq himself gave a fine account of Vitek

The Article

Mark le Brocq a flamboyant Vítek

Opera Today

She was joined by Mark Le Brocq as Siegfried, Le Brocq was more lyrical and nuanced and made better use of his words

Seen and Heard

Mark Le Brocq, adding lyricism to power for the maturing man

The Stage

No Siegfried, however foolish, can do both these works a few hours apart, so it was Mark Le Brocq who sailed into the Gibichung plot, singing with sweet tone and sufficient heft, qualities rarely combined in the role

BachTrack

Despite longueurs in Act One, there are some intensely lyrical passages. Mazal, Brouček’s painter tenant (Marc le Brocq) profits from these moments and the act closes in an ecstatic love duet with his girlfriend Malinka (Fflur Wyn).

Quarterly Review

Mark Le Brocq, in one of many roles, excels as a jailed writer with a strong similarity to Vaclav Havel

The Times

Quadrupling up, Mark Le Brocq excels as painter Mazal and in other guises – fearlessly and ardently cresting Janáček’s tenor peaks.

The Stage

A deluxe British cast, shed light on Janáček’s grueling vocal lines and included Mark Le Brocq

The Guardian

Grange Park has done well with its tenors, especially Mark Le Brocq in four ridiculously high roles

Financial Times

The rest of the cast reads like a roll-call of the British operatic establishment, with Mark Le Brocq, Andrew Shore, Clive Bayley, Anne-Marie Owens and Adrian Thompson all revelling in their multiple roles

BachTrack

Grange Park Opera focuses very much on engaging the best singers for their parts, and here the stage was full of them. Mark Le Brocq excelled in several roles, his remarkably flexible tenor ringing out gloriously in diverse characterizations, most notably as the would-be romantic lover Mazal

Music OMH

Mark Le Brocq, in a tenor part liberally sprinkled with top Cs, is heroic as Mazal

Culture Whisper

Mark Le Brocq’s ailing, oily Mao is a compelling sphinx

The Times

There is cast-iron evenness among the key players. Mark Le Brocq finds an unexpected warmth in Mao

The Scotsman

As Mao, Mark Le Brocq masterfully conveyed a sense both of charisma and folly

The Observer

The singing and acting was superb right across the board.Mark le Brocq in splendid voice

BachTrack

This central quartet shine.....Mark le Brocq’s Mao is one of his best role to date, making a strong dramatic impact

Sunday Times

The most satisfying figure, in part because his frequent presence gives us a chance to know him, in part because Mark Le Brocq portrayed him outstandingly, is that of Pierre Bezukhov, rich, socially awkward; a man without purpose yet idealistic, sensitive and questing

Observer (July 2019)

Pierre’s pivotal journey is depicted with a psychological fervour that commands the drama and gives the excellent Mark Le Brocq a role to savour. The imposing tenor gives a terrific performance

Whats on Stage (July 2019)

Pierre Bezhukov, wonderfully portrayed by tenor Mark Le Brocq

The Guardian (July 2019)

And Mark Le Brocq (Pierre) were all excellent, but it was the latter's thoughtfully bookish personality which was the most engaging. His role is small in the first half, but his earnest rage at Anatole showed off his richly coloured voice across a very wide range, and his self-discovery in Act 2 was very convincingly pulled off

BachTrack (July 2019)

There is a definite attempt to keep Pierre at the centre of a narrative arc so it helps that he is incarnated in the night’s most outstanding performance by Mark Le Brocq

Classical Source (July 2019)

Le Brocq, a star of WNO’s recent Russian productions, delivers the goods again as a studied, troubled Pierre

British Theatre Guide (July 2019)

Le Brocq’s stature gives him the physical presence to believably intimidate the scoundrel Anatole yet his physique doesn’t stop him from showing a beautiful vulnerability

British Theatre Guide (July 2019)

Mark Le Brocq offered a superb performance, communicating both strength and vulnerability, phrasing with tenderness but delivering with conviction

Opera Today (July 2019)

Among the cast, Mark Le Brocq’s foppish, sardonic Loge and Mark Stone’s vocally authoritative Alberich stand out, managing to create stage personalities to match the strength of their musical ones

The Guardian

Negus’s cast mostly copes admirably with the challenge. The unquestionable star of the show is Mark Le Brocq’s Loge (pictured below), a kind of fin de siècle Mephistopheles, with frock coat and cane, pirouetting round the stage in a way that openly ridicules the stolid, bewildered, humourless bourgeoisie of mount Valhalla, and even runs rings (non-golden) round the crafty tenants of Nibelheim. He also sings - the most lyrical music in the opera - with elegance and eloquence

The Arts Desk

several outstanding performances. Chief amongst these was Mark Le Brocq’s dodgy dealer Loge, whose crimson frockcoat and twirling cane brought a whiff of a Victorian music hall MC. His ease of movement and vocal projection were outstanding, his perfectly caught ambivalence tailor-made for this ro

Opera Today

his was a performance that was truly of an ‘international’ standard and – amongst the men – Le Brocq (who is next year’s Siegmund) was the singer who truly understood his character the most. He was rarely still and was constantly reacting to what was going on around him and – even with a smirk or some feigned deference – he commanded that the audience’s attention be solely on him whenever he was on stage

Seen and Heard

This leaves the two stars of the show. The tenor Mark Le Brocq was an outstanding Loge in the style of our very own Game of Thrones Lord Varys. In this respect, whilst he was always vocally secure it was his portrayal of the role as the skilled manipulator and commander of informants that stood out

Opera Spy

Both performances set a very high standard, Stone embracing Alberich’s dark soul with total conviction, and Le Brocq giving an elegant, rather camp bite to Loge’s slippery loyalties

Classical Source

Mark Le Brocq’s wry, sardonic Loge, reminiscent of the late Robert Tear’s

The Times