ABOUT RICHARD
ABOUT RICHARD
A Finalist in the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards at Wigmore Hall and described by Opera Now as a “countertenor star of the future”, Richard is a highly sought-after countertenor and conductor from south-east London.
Richard trained at the Royal College of Music, graduating in 2024 with an MMus with Distinction. He continues his vocal studies with tenor Ben Johnson and has received coachings and masterclasses from many internationally acclaimed singers and conductors, including Dame Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance CBE, Laurence Cummings and James Platt.
Like many countertenors, Richard is particularly drawn to early music and regularly performs Baroque opera and oratorio. His stage roles include Arsamene Serse, Didymus Theodora, Secrecy The Fairy Queen, Joad Athalia, and The Sorceress Dido and Aeneas. While at the Royal College of Music he also performed the roles of Athamas Semele, Ottone L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Poro Cleofide in opera scenes.
Alongside this core repertoire, Richard’s strong, mezzo-like vocal quality and expansive vibrato allow him to take on less traditional countertenor roles. These have included Prince Orlovsky Die Fledermaus and a range of Gilbert and Sullivan roles — a repertoire he continues to champion with particular enthusiasm. He has worked with opera companies including Merry Opera, Kentish Opera and Ensemble Orquesta.
Richard is equally at home on the concert platform and has performed much of the standard Baroque and Classical countertenor repertoire, including Handel’s Messiah (most recently in Merry Opera’s acclaimed staged production), Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Purcell’s Come Ye Sons of Art, Mozart’s Vespers, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Beyond this, he enjoys exploring repertoire not often sung by countertenors. Highlights include Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Orff’s Carmina Burana (as the Roasted Swan), and Haydn’s Stabat Mater.
A committed advocate for contemporary music, Richard has collaborated extensively with living composers and specialist modern-music ensembles. He has twice worked with the Project40 Ensemble, performing the title role in Geoffrey Burgon’s The Fall of Lucifer and reviving Anna Semple’s Tell-Tale Heart for countertenor and orchestra. He returns to the ensemble later this year for a performance of Jacob Churchyard’s Ночь. In 2023, Richard was a member of the onstage solo octet in the UK première of Libby Larsen’s Barnum’s Bird at the RCM International Opera Studio, and in 2024 he appeared in a trio of contrasting roles across six short operas presented by RCMIOS and Tête à Tête under the collective title Revolutions. He also enjoys an ongoing collaboration with composer and podcaster Jonathan Whiting; together they created the song cycle Seasons (2021), exploring poetic representations of the seasons across four Romance languages.
As a song recitalist, Richard has given recitals across both the UK and Italy, performing repertoire ranging from 16th-century lute songs to 21st-century works, including his own compositions. He frequently collaborates with pianists Firoze Madon (Help Musicians Accompanist’s Prize winner at the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards), Benjamin Markovic and Philip Berg (Master of the Music at the King’s Chapel of the Savoy), as well as a wide range of other keyboard players and lutenists. In addition to his success at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Richard won Third Prize at the 2024 AESS Dame Patricia Routledge National English Song Awards, where he was also awarded the Rodney Gibson Early Music Prize. He was a Young Artist at the Southrepps Music Festival in 2023.
Alongside his performing career, Richard is an accomplished linguist. He previously studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating with a starred First-Class degree in Italian, French and Linguistics. His academic specialisms include Italian and wider Romance dialectology, as well as phonetic science. Both his undergraduate and postgraduate research focused on consonant perception in singing as opposed to speech. During his year abroad, Richard worked in Italy as Choir Director at St Mark’s English Church, Florence, organising concerts and recitals and appearing regularly as a guest soloist with the Coro Universitario di Firenze. He also coordinated various ‘virtual choir’ projects during the Covid-19 lockdowns, bringing together singers from all corners of the globe.
While at Cambridge, Richard was a choral scholar and later a lay clerk at St John’s College, performing in major international venues including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Royal Festival Hall and Singapore Esplanade. He is now a regular presence on the London ‘depping’ circuit, including at Westminster Cathedral, the King’s Chapel of the Savoy and St Mary Abbots, Kensington. He has performed throughout the UK and Europe with ensembles such as the Ralph Allwood Singers and Vox Medicea (Fondazione Mascarade, Florence), and is a regular chorus member for the London Handel Festival’s annual performances of Messiah and the Bach Passions at St George’s Hanover Square.
Richard’s musical life began at a young age. He grew up watching his mother perform leading roles in local productions of all thirteen of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas, an experience that fostered a lasting love of theatre and operetta. In 2011, while singing as a treble at the Queen’s (now King’s) Chapel of the Savoy, he won the BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year competition and later sang at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral. He now enjoys something of a full-circle moment by training the current choristers of the Chapel at his former school, St Olave’s Grammar School in Orpington, Kent.
In addition to singing, Richard is an experienced conductor, pianist, organist and oboist. He is currently Director of Music at St Augustine’s Church, Tooting and Musical Director of Dartford Choral Society. He has conducted a wide range of repertoire, including productions of The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, and Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor. In 2024, he was Assistant Conductor for the final concert of the Cambridge Summer Music Festival, conducting the Academy of St Martin in the Fields at Saffron Hall. In 2025, he takes on his first musical theatre conductorship as Musical Director for Ferrier Operatic Society’s The Musical of Musicals, The Musical.
A Finalist in the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards at Wigmore Hall and described by Opera Now as a “countertenor star of the future”, Richard is a highly sought-after countertenor and conductor from south-east London.
Richard trained at the Royal College of Music, graduating in 2024 with an MMus with Distinction. He continues his vocal studies with tenor Ben Johnson and has received coachings and masterclasses from many internationally acclaimed singers and conductors, including Dame Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance CBE, Laurence Cummings and James Platt.
Like many countertenors, Richard is particularly drawn to early music and regularly performs Baroque opera and oratorio. His stage roles include Arsamene Serse, Didymus Theodora, Secrecy The Fairy Queen, Joad Athalia, and The Sorceress Dido and Aeneas. While at the Royal College of Music he also performed the roles of Athamas Semele, Ottone L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Poro Cleofide in opera scenes.
Alongside this core repertoire, Richard’s strong, mezzo-like vocal quality and expansive vibrato allow him to take on less traditional countertenor roles. These have included Prince Orlovsky Die Fledermaus and a range of Gilbert and Sullivan roles — a repertoire he continues to champion with particular enthusiasm. He has worked with opera companies including Merry Opera, Kentish Opera and Ensemble Orquesta.
Richard is equally at home on the concert platform and has performed much of the standard Baroque and Classical countertenor repertoire, including Handel’s Messiah (most recently in Merry Opera’s acclaimed staged production), Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Purcell’s Come Ye Sons of Art, Mozart’s Vespers, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Beyond this, he enjoys exploring repertoire not often sung by countertenors. Highlights include Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Orff’s Carmina Burana (as the Roasted Swan), and Haydn’s Stabat Mater.
A committed advocate for contemporary music, Richard has collaborated extensively with living composers and specialist modern-music ensembles. He has twice worked with the Project40 Ensemble, performing the title role in Geoffrey Burgon’s The Fall of Lucifer and reviving Anna Semple’s Tell-Tale Heart for countertenor and orchestra. He returns to the ensemble later this year for a performance of Jacob Churchyard’s Ночь. In 2023, Richard was a member of the onstage solo octet in the UK première of Libby Larsen’s Barnum’s Bird at the RCM International Opera Studio, and in 2024 he appeared in a trio of contrasting roles across six short operas presented by RCMIOS and Tête à Tête under the collective title Revolutions. He also enjoys an ongoing collaboration with composer and podcaster Jonathan Whiting; together they created the song cycle Seasons (2021), exploring poetic representations of the seasons across four Romance languages.
As a song recitalist, Richard has given recitals across both the UK and Italy, performing repertoire ranging from 16th-century lute songs to 21st-century works, including his own compositions. He frequently collaborates with pianists Firoze Madon (Help Musicians Accompanist’s Prize winner at the 2024 Kathleen Ferrier Awards), Benjamin Markovic and Philip Berg (Master of the Music at the King’s Chapel of the Savoy), as well as a wide range of other keyboard players and lutenists. In addition to his success at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Richard won Third Prize at the 2024 AESS Dame Patricia Routledge National English Song Awards, where he was also awarded the Rodney Gibson Early Music Prize. He was a Young Artist at the Southrepps Music Festival in 2023.
Alongside his performing career, Richard is an accomplished linguist. He previously studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating with a starred First-Class degree in Italian, French and Linguistics. His academic specialisms include Italian and wider Romance dialectology, as well as phonetic science. Both his undergraduate and postgraduate research focused on consonant perception in singing as opposed to speech. During his year abroad, Richard worked in Italy as Choir Director at St Mark’s English Church, Florence, organising concerts and recitals and appearing regularly as a guest soloist with the Coro Universitario di Firenze. He also coordinated various ‘virtual choir’ projects during the Covid-19 lockdowns, bringing together singers from all corners of the globe.
While at Cambridge, Richard was a choral scholar and later a lay clerk at St John’s College, performing in major international venues including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Royal Festival Hall and Singapore Esplanade. He is now a regular presence on the London ‘depping’ circuit, including at Westminster Cathedral, the King’s Chapel of the Savoy and St Mary Abbots, Kensington. He has performed throughout the UK and Europe with ensembles such as the Ralph Allwood Singers and Vox Medicea (Fondazione Mascarade, Florence), and is a regular chorus member for the London Handel Festival’s annual performances of Messiah and the Bach Passions at St George’s Hanover Square.
Richard’s musical life began at a young age. He grew up watching his mother perform leading roles in local productions of all thirteen of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas, an experience that fostered a lasting love of theatre and operetta. In 2011, while singing as a treble at the Queen’s (now King’s) Chapel of the Savoy, he won the BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year competition and later sang at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral. He now enjoys something of a full-circle moment by training the current choristers of the Chapel at his former school, St Olave’s Grammar School in Orpington, Kent.
In addition to singing, Richard is an experienced conductor, pianist, organist and oboist. He is currently Director of Music at St Augustine’s Church, Tooting and Musical Director of Dartford Choral Society. He has conducted a wide range of repertoire, including productions of The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, and Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor. In 2024, he was Assistant Conductor for the final concert of the Cambridge Summer Music Festival, conducting the Academy of St Martin in the Fields at Saffron Hall. In 2025, he takes on his first musical theatre conductorship as Musical Director for Ferrier Operatic Society’s The Musical of Musicals, The Musical.