Caroline Taylor was spellbinding
CAMBRIDGE INDEPENDENT, John Gilroy
Asteria/Tamerlano | Cambridge Handel Opera Company (2022)
Winner of the 2021 Emmy Destinn Young Singers Awards for Czech Opera and Song, Caroline Taylor studied as an Oglesby Scholar at the Royal Northern College of Music, generously supported by a Help Musicians UK Maidment Award. She is a recent Longborough Festival Opera Emerging Artist and member of the Wigmore Hall French Song Exchange. She studies with Susan Roberts and Louise Winter.
This season, Caroline makes her debut at the Wigmore Hall and joins Oxford Lieder as a 2022-2024 Young Artist with pianist George Ireland. She makes her company debut with Bampton Classical Opera as Tirsi in Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno and performs the title role in Janáček’s Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen) with Hampstead Garden Opera. In concert, Caroline performs Pergolesi Stabat Mater with the Northern Chamber Orchestra and Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with Chester Philharmonic Orchestra and appears a soloist with the Emmy Destinn Foundation at St John’s Smith Square.
In 2021/2022, Caroline made her role debut as Asteria in Handel’s Tamerlano with Cambridge Handel Opera Company. She joined the Grange Festival as Kate and cover Elsie Maynard in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard, where she also jumped in to sing Asteria to great acclaim. In concert, she performed Mozart Requiem (Tatton Singers) and Fauré Requiem (Manchester Camerata, Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus) and a collection of Johanna Kinkel songs with pianist Sholto Kynoch at BeethovenFest Bonn.
An RNCM Gold Medal finalist, Caroline won the 2018 Joyce and Michael Kennedy Strauss Award, the 2018 Sir Anthony Lewis Memorial Prize and the 2019 Dean and Chadlington Singing Competition. She also received Third Prize at the 2019 Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards. Caroline and pianist George Ireland were finalists in the London Song Festival’s British Art Song Competition, encompassing a masterclass with Dame Sarah Connolly. Most recently, Caroline was a semi-finalist in the Royal Over-seas League Singers’ Prize.
Caroline’s operatic roles include Chocholka and cover Vixen Sharp-Ears/The Cunning Little Vixen (Longborough Festival Opera), Adina/The Elixir of Love (Duchy Opera; King’s Head Theatre; Opera’r Ddraig), Clori/L’Egisto (Hampstead Garden Opera), Lauretta/Gianni Schicchi (RNCM Opera), Helena/The Enchanted Island (British Youth Opera), She/Cupboard Love, Governess/The Turn of the Screw and Miss Wordsworth/Albert Herring (Byre Opera), Papagena and cover Pamina/The Magic Flute (St Andrews Voices) and Sara in the World Premiere of Ben Kaye and Adam Gorb’s The Path to Heaven (RNCM, Psappha).
Concert highlights include Britten Les Illuminations with the Northern Ballet Sinfonia, Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music with the Southbank Sinfonia at St John’s Smith Square and Mahler Symphony No. 8 at the Bridgewater Hall. Further concert repertoire includes Handel Messiah, Saul and Jephtha, Vivaldi Gloria, Bach St John Passion and St Matthew Passion, Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem and Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antarctica.
Caroline is a former Leeds Lieder Young Artist and Concordia Foundation Artist, with whom she made her solo debuts at St Martin in the Fields and St James’s Piccadilly. In 2021, Caroline and pianist George Needham gave the World Premiere of Jen Hartley and Kerry Darbishire’s Lakeland Song Cycle at the inaugural Cumbria Opera Festival. Prior to her musical studies, Caroline completed an MA (Hons) in French, Italian and Spanish at the University of St Andrews, where she received the Cedric Thorpe Davie Memorial Prize for outstanding musical contribution.
Biography not to be shared/reproduced without permission
Caroline Taylor gives a glittering performance
THE TIMES, Simon Thompson
She/Cupboard Love | Byre Opera (2019)
Caroline Taylor 