B i o g r a p h y
Charlotte graduated from the Alexander Gibson Opera School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow in 2022, where she studied with Helen Lawson. She was generously supported by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Trust and The Margaret Kwint Scholarship, having previously been supported by the the John and Caroline Sibbald Scholarship.
She graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music in 2018, where she studied with Nicholas Powell, generously supported by the Riga Heesom Award. During her time at the RNCM she won the 2017 Dame Eva Turner Prize For Potential Dramatic Sopranos, was a member of the RNCM Songsters, the college's elite 'song squad', and took part in the Opera North RNCM Chorus Mentor Scheme, who subsequently offered her a place on the extra chorus list.
Charlotte made her Wigmore Hall debut in May 2018, singing Mark-Anthony Turnage's Harmonie du soir. She had previously worked with the composer for a concert performance of the work in November 2017, as part of the New Music North West Festival.
Formerly, Charlotte studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, learning with head of department Dr Linda Hirst. Whilst at Trinity she was awarded the Helen Roll and Eva Malpass scholarships, was highly commended in the North London Rosenbatt Prize and won a place on the English National Opera’s Chorus Mentor Scheme, where she is now a member of the extra chorus.
Before respecialising in opera, Charlotte toured worldwide as a soloist with Irish choral group Anúna (of Riverdance fame) for several years, making innumerable trips to Europe, the Americas and Asia. As part of the group, she recorded six albums and three DVDs, including the famous soprano solos of Allegri’s Miserere, arranged by Anúna’s director Michael McGlynn.
Charlotte also has a degree in musicology from King’s College London, where she won the Advanced Performance Studies Prize which enabled her to attend the Royal Academy of Music for vocal lessons, where she studied with Dr Nicholas Clapton. Whilst at KCL, as an excellent sight-reader, she held a choral scholarship in the prestigious King's College London Chapel Choir (directed by David Trendell) and was music librarian for two years. She had previously held a Guinness Choral Scholarship to Christchurch Cathedral Dublin in her gap year.
Charlotte has performed in a wide variety of opera productions, and is currently on the extra chorus list for English National Opera. Previous chorus opportunities include chorus in Götterdämmerung at the Edinburgh International Festival, several seasons with Winslow Hall Opera and playing one of the ragazzi soloists in the Royal Opera House’s acclaimed concert performances of Donizetti’s Linda Di Chamounix, recorded and released by Opera Rara.
Upcoming opera roles include Ortlinde in Wagner's Die Walküre (UBS International Women's Day promotional event Vixens & Valkyries with Regents Opera and the England women's football team), Gerhilde in Wagner's Die Walküre (Regents Opera), a concert performance singing the role of Chrysothemis in Strauss' Elektra (Regents Opera), and a reprise of her critically aclaimed interpretation of Freia in Wagner's Das Rheingold (Regents Opera) in 2024.
Previous fully staged roles include Freia in Das Rheingold (Regents Opera), Seigrune in Wagner's Die Walküre (Edinburgh Players Opera Group), The Female Chorus (narrator) in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (RCS), Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Fulham Opera), the Stewardess in Jonathan Dove's Flight (RCS), Bessie Throckmorton in Edward German's Merrie England (concert performance with Sandbach Choral Society), the title role in Hindemith's Sancta Susanna (Piggots), mother in Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel (RNCM), Noémie (ugly step sister) in Massenet's Cendrillon (RNCM), La Baronne de Gondremarck in Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne (RNCM), Helena in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Trinity Laban), Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Holbourne Opera), Maria Bertram in Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park (Hampstead Garden Opera), and both Filicitas and Dincocrates in Nick Bicat’s staged oratorio Perpetua (Cantata Dramatica).
In demand as an oratorio soloist, Charlotte's recent highlights include the newly comissioned Water Psalms by Thomas LaVoy (Edinburgh Choral Union), Handel’s Messiah (Bristol Choral Society), Haydn’s Nelson Mass (Royal Northern Sinfonia), Rossini’s Petite messe solonnelle (Sandbach Choral Society), Haydn's Theresienmesse and Mozart's Requiem (The Royal Leamington Spa Bach Choir), Saul (Border Singers and Shropshire Symphonia) and Verdi's Requiem (Gravesham Choral Society and Orchestra).
Opera, choral soloist and oratorio performance venues include Edinburgh's Usher Hall, The Royal Festival Hall, The Royal Albert Hall, The Hayward Gallery, the Barbican, the Cadogan Hall, St James’s Piccadilly, The National Gallery and The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. She enjoys frequent travels abroad, including thrice being awarded scholarships to study at the Esztergom Liszt Festival in Hungary as well as touring Europe with the Philharmonia Chorus and the Blossom Street Singers.
Physical theatre and acting are an important part of Charlotte's life. During her undergraduate degree, she played the role of a chorister for two seasons in the National Theatre's sell-out Olivier stage production of Coram Boy, directed by Melly Still with music by Adrian Sutton. She has also studied acting formally, taking a course at the London School of Film Media and Performance, where she was awarded a full scholarship (Kevin Spacey Foundation Scholarship) and won the Silver Medal Award. She has also worked on two large scale multi-disciplinary projects: an Arts Council funded opera explorations with The Puppet Centre and Central School of Speech and Drama as part of their Puppetry in Opera symposium and a ‘Singing Through Puppets’ workshop series for a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with chamber ensemble Chroma.
Contemporary music is one of Charlotte’s main focuses. In the Autumn of 2020, despite the pandemic, she recorded performances of new works by student composers at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with the Red Note Ensemble for broadcast online.
As previously mentioned, Charlotte made her Wigmore Hall debut in May 2018 performing Mark-Anthony Turnage's Harmonie du Soir.
Charlotte has recently worked and collaborated with Stuart MacRae, who she met at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has worked on new song repertoire with him, assisted one of his PhD students, and workshopped new material for his upcoming Macbeth, culminating in the production of the soundtrack to the Opera podcast 'Creating The Monster'.
Other composers she has recently met and worked with include Jonathan Dove (for whom she sung the London premier of Mansfield Park and recently his new orchestration of Flight for RCS in 2022), Stephen McNeff (for whom she has worked several times workshopping new material) and Simone Spagnolo. She was lucky enough to study with Harrison Birtwistle whilst she was at King's College London including singing the Carmen Paschale with the Chapel Choir.
Following the success of her performance of Caitlin Rowley’s solo opera Breadcrumbs at the Tête-à-Tête Festival (King’s Place) in summer 2014 (in the presence of Jane Manning who helped develop the work), Charlotte and Caitlin are currently devising an extension of the work for future performance.
