ABOUT

Claire is a British/Irish soprano with a varied career as both a soloist and an ensemble singer. Claire is City Music Foundation Artist 2022-2024 as well as a young artist with Opera Prelude and a performer on the Live Music Now programme. Recent highlights include making her debut at Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by John Wilson, and at Cadogan Hall in Bach’s B Minor Mass with Thames Philharmonic Choir.

A creative collaborator, in January 2023, Claire devised Handel’s Europe, a programme of Handel Cantatas and German Arias presented in a chamber format. Through this project, The Portrait Players was formed. The ensemble brings 17th and 18th century music to modern audiences with engaging programmes informed by historical characters. The group continues to grow in popularity, recently making its debut at St. Martin-in-the-fields and is a member of the Brighton Early Music Festival Live! Scheme for 2023-2024. You can find out more about The Portrait Players here. https://theportraitplayers.co.uk

As an ensemble singer, Claire is a 2023-2024 Monteverdi apprentice, joining The Monteverdi Choir in tours across Europe, working with John Eliot Gardiner and Dinis Sousa. Further ensemble work includes projects with The Choir of the OAE (John Wilson), The Gabrieli Consort (Paul McCreesh), Britten Sinfonia Voices (Eamon Dougan) and Figure Ensemble (Freddie Waxman).

On the concert platform, Claire performed Bach Cantatas as part of the Snape Maltings Proms 2019, conducted by Philippe Herreweghe and as a student, regularly performed in the Kohn Foundation/RAM Bach Cantata series with solo highlights of Bach’s Wedding Cantata BVW 202 in June 2017 and Mass in F major in October 2018, as well as Bach’s Matthew Passion with Trevor Pinnock. Further concert highlights include Poulenc Gloria, Brahms Requiem, Smyth Mass in D, Macdowall Magnificat, Haydn Nelson Mass as well as Mozart Exultate Jubilate and Mass in C Minor in De Montfort Hall, Leicester.

An instinctive linguist, Claire made her Oxford Song Festival debut with pianist Guy Murgatroyd in 2019, returning to the festival in 2021. She has a growing interest in translation, both of song and opera, since her studies at the Conservatoire de Toulouse and regularly creates her own translations of songs and arias for concert programmes.

In the world of opera Claire has worked with companies including Opera Holland Park, The Grange Festival and Nevill Holt Opera. At Opera Holland Park she performed the role of Frantik in The Cunning Little Vixen and in the chorus of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In 2019 she understudied the role of Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro at The Grange Festival, and during the same year sang the role of Venus in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis with the Royal Academy of Music.

Claire is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music (MA Vocal Studies, DipRAM, LRAM), Durham University (BA French and Music), and the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Toulouse (singing and piano accompaniment). In November 2023 she was a semi-finalist in the Concours Corneille International Baroque Competition, was a Britten Pears Young Artist for 2019, a semi-finalist in the Somerset Song Prize 2017 and a finalist in the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform 2017.

When not singing, Claire is an amateur triathlete and loves to swim in open (but not too cold) water.