Among the parts he has performed there are the title roles of Barber of Seville and Busoni's Dr Faust, Germont (La traviata), Valentin (Faust), Eisenstein and Falke (Die Fledermaus), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), Der Spielmann (Die Königskinder), Papageno (Magic Flute), Melitone (The Force of Destiny), Malatesta (Don Pasquale), Sancho Panza (Don Quixote), Taddeo (The Italian Girl in Algiers) and the title roles in Falstaff and Rigoletto.

He combined his work at ENO with performances for the other major UK companies: Covent Garden, Scottish Opera, Opera North and Glyndebourne Festival Opera, while his international career has included Bayreuth (Beckmesser, Die Meistersinger) and the opera houses of New York, including the Metropolitan Opera where he has sung Balstrode, Sharpless Faninal and Fieramosca (Benvenuto Cellini), Chicago, Los Angeles, Santa Fé, Toronto, Paris (Opera Bastille and Chatelet), Amsterdam, Vienna, Brussels, Berlin (Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper), Munich where his roles have included Paolo (Simon Boccanegra), Beckmesser and Sharpless, La Scala Milan, singing the title role in the world premiere of Outis (Berio) and the Forester (Cunning Little Vixen), The Norwegian Opera Oslo, Opera du Rhin Strasbourg (Falstaff), Cagliari, Spoleto and Florence.

Companies he has recorded for include CBS, EMI, Hyperion, Chandos and Decca. Recordings include Britten's Peter Grimes (for which he received a Grammy Award), Gloriana and Rape of Lucretia, the title role in Dallapiccola's Ulisse, the role of Smirnov in Walton's The Bear, the title role of The Barber of Seville and a widely acclaimed solo album, Bel Canto Arias. With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti he sang Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, issued to commemorate Solti's 50 years recording for Decca, for which he received his second Grammy award. Recently he has recorded a highly praised Nabucco and Death in Venice for which he received a Grammy nomination.

His extensive concert repertoire includes works by composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Britten, Dallapiccola, Elgar, Fauré, Handel, Henze, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Orff, Tippett and Vaughan Williams. He has appeared with orchestras including the London Symphony, BBC Symphony, the Symphony Orchestras of Sydney, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Washington (National Symphony), Madrid (ONE), Seville, Tenerife, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Liverpool (RLPO), Manchester (Halle and BBC Philharmonic), Dusseldorf, Turin (RAI), Gothenburg, Lisbon (Gulbenkian), the Northern Sinfonia, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Israel Philharmonic.