Lucy Crowe, Claire Barnett-Jones, Marcus Farnsworth, Iain Burnside, Catrin Finch, Timothy Ridout
Biography Lucy Crowe, Claire Barnett-Jones, Marcus Farnsworth, Iain Burnside, Catrin Finch, Timothy Ridout
Lucy Crowe
Born in Staffordshire, Lucy Crowe studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where she is a Fellow.
With repertoire ranging from Purcell, Handel and Mozart to Donizetti’s Adina and Verdi’s Gilda she has sung with opera companies & orchestras throughout the world, including the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Festival, English National Opera, the Teatro Real Madrid, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bavarian State Opera, Metropolitan Opera New York, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Haïm, Oramo and Nelsons, The Berlin Philharmonic/Harding and Nelsons, Vienna Philharmonic/Nelsons, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Egarr, Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Nézet-Séguin, the Monteverdi Orchestra/Gardiner, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra/Rattle.
Recent opera appearances include her debut at Dutch National Opera in the title role Rodelinda, Poppea Agrippina at the Royal Opera House, Susanna Le Nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera and Pamina Die Zauberflöte at the Liceu Barcelona. In the 2022/23 season Lucy returns to the Royal Opera House for Musetta La Boheme.
Highlights in concert this season include a European tour of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, which is also performed at the BBC Proms, Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor with the Dunedin Consort, Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest and with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (BRSO), concerts of Haydn and Schubert arias also with the BRSO, Morgana Alcina with the Les Violons du Roy in Quebec and Montreal, and her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra for concerts of selected Mozart arias.
In recital she has appeared at the Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Mostly Mozart and Salzburg Festivals and the BBC Proms. Lucy has a vast discography. Her debut disc for Linn records featuring Berg, Strauss, and Schoenberg was released in the summer of 2021. Lucy received a Grammy nomination in 2021 for Best Opera Recording for Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen with the London Symphony Orchestra/ Sir Simon Rattle.
Claire Barnett-Jones
is fast becoming one of the most sought-after voices on both the operatic stage and the concert platform, recently being named Operawire’s Top 10 Rising Stars after being a Finalist and Winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2021. Recent highlights include her role and company debuts as Fricka Die Walküre at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl in Austria, and as Madame Flora The Medium for Oper Frankfurt, singing the role of Dryad in concert performances of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Edinburgh International Festival, and her European concert debut at The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethe’s Faust, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
Claire opens the 2022-23 season with her French operatic debut as Jezibaba in the Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse’s new production of Rusalka directed by Stefano Podo. Claire also makes a return to English National Opera, to join the cast of their concert performance of Britten’s Gloriana. Further season highlights include company debuts at Welsh National Opera and The Grange Festival . On the concert and recital platforms Claire sings Messiah with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and tours the UK alongside pianist Sholto Kynoch as part of the Oxford Lieder Festival autumn touring season.
More recent highlights include Sosostris in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the Baton of Edward Gardner at the Royal Festival Hall, Rossweisse and Fricka in The Valkyrie at English National Opera; the beginning of a new Ring Cycle at ENO directed by Richard Jones, as well as Lapák Cunning Little Vixen, also for ENO, creating the role of ‘Alto 1’ in Stockhausen’s Mittwoch Aus Licht with Birmingham Opera Company and the BBC Proms, directed by Sir Graham Vick, and Fricka and Wellgunde in Das Rheingold for Grimeborn Festival. Cover roles for English National Opera have included Frederica Luisa Miller, Jezibaba Rusalka and Suzuki Madame Butterfly.
In 2017, Claire was presented with the Wessex Glyndebourne Association Award for a young singer of much promise, and in 2018 made her Glyndebourne Festival Debut as 2nd Noble Orphan in Der Rosenkavalier, and performed Annina La Traviata for Glyndebourne Touring Opera later that year. Following this, she made her company debut with English National Opera as Eurydice Myth/Persephone in Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus, and was subsequently awarded the Lilian Baylis Award for Outstanding Potential in the Field of Opera in recognition of her exceptional stage debut. Claire performed the role of Maurya in Riders of the Sea for British Youth Opera, where she was awarded the Basil A. Turner Prize for outstanding performance. For Buxton Festival Opera she has performed Gertrude and cover Mother in Charpentier’s Louise conducted by Stephen Barlow.
In concert, Claire has performed Beethoven Symphony No. 9 at St John’s Smith Square, Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of ‘Precipice’, a series of specially curated concerts for The Grange Festival, and has given recitals at the BBC Proms with Simon Lepper, Snape Maltings with James Ballieu, the Ludlow English Song Festival and the Wigmore Hall with Iain Burnside and the Blackheath Halls with Rebecca Cohen. Claire was selected to compete in the Final Rounds of Operalia, The World Opera Competition. She was also awarded the Wagner Prize of the Netherlands, the Junior Jury Prize at the 52nd International Vocal Competition s’Hertogenbosch, as well as the 2nd Prize, Villa Medici Recital Prize and Waynflete Singers Concert Prize all at The Grange Festival International Singing Competition. She has also been the recipient of the Elly Ameling Masterclass Prize (Lieder) at the 51st IVC Competition with pianist Somi Kim, the Dame Patricia Routledge English Song Prize, the Birmingham Town Hall/Symphony Hall Recital Prize, and the Mario Lanza Opera Prize.
Claire studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Royal Academy Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is a recipient of the Sir John Tomlinson Fellowship whilst a member of the English National Opera Harewood Artist Programme (2019-2022), Independent Opera Fellow and Samling Artist.
Marcus Farnsworth
was awarded first prize in the 2009 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, and the Song Prize at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Competition. He completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in 2011, where roles included Guglielmo (Così fan tutte); Sid (Albert Herring); Oreste (Cavalli’s Giasone) and Meredith in Peter Maxwell Davies’s Kommilitonen!
Recent and future opera plans include Eddy in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek for Music Theatre Wales; Novice’s Friend in a new production of Britten’s Billy Budd for English National Opera; the title role in Britten’s Owen Wingrave as part of the International Chamber Music Festival in Nuremberg, and, in concert, Kilian in Der Freischütz with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis; Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas) for the Early Opera Company and Christian Curnyn at the Wigmore Hall and a recording of Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth with the Classical Opera Company.
Future recitals include Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin for the Oxford Lieder Festival and at St John’s, Smith Square, London; a Schubertiade with The Prince Consort in Perth and Britten’s Tit for Tat with Malcolm Martineau and the Canticles with Julius Drake and Mark Padmore, as part of the Wigmore Hall’s Britten Festival in 2012.
On the concert platform plans include Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3 with the LSO and Sir Colin Davis; Haydn’s Paukenmesse with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Labardie; St Matthew Passion (Christ and arias) in Lausanne, Switzerland and Wroclaw, Poland with the Gabrieli Consort and Paul McCreesh; Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King with the Wermlands Opera Orchestra, Karlstad, Sweden and a return to the Newbury Spring Festival in May 2012 to sing Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem. Marcus will also make appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the coming seasons.
Marcus has recently performed Bach’s Cantata No. 82 Ich habe Genug and Zelenka’s The Lamentations of Jeremiah with the Academy of Ancient Music in the UK and on tour in France with whom he has also sung Bach’s St John Passion in London and Cambridge and Charpentier’s Te Deum at the Three Choirs Festival. Other concert appearances have included the St John Passion with the Gabrieli Consort in Berlin.
