biography
Olivia recently graduated as Kathleen Roberts scholar from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, gaining a distinction in her MMus under Tessa Cahill and winning the Director's Prize for Excellence. She represented the vocal faculty in Trinity's Gold Medal Showcase in King's Place in January, winning both the main award and the audience prize.
Most recently she completed the Guildhall School of Music and Dance's Opera Makers MA as a librettist, in collaboration with the Royal Opera House, and will remain as a Junior Fellow in September.
She previously read English as senior choral scholar at Queens’ College Cambridge, where she won the Beaumont Award for musical excellence and the Gilbert Ryle Reading Prize. Last year she was joint recipient of the national Joaninha Award, which was shared between finalists.
An advocate for contemporary music, recent performances include Gretel/Griselda [The Hive, Hoxton Halls]; King Harald's Saga [Gold Medal, King's Place]; Haitch [Syllable, Trinity/TheatreO]; The Lost One [A Time of Empty Tales, Tete a Tete festival]; Stimmung [Facade Ensemble/Courtauld Institute].
A keen librettist, works include The Hollow After [composer: Dominic Veall, premiered at the Polish Hearth Club], a Christmas carol commission for the London Mozart Players with the composer Georgia Barnes, and a micro-opera commission from the Royal Opera House and Casco Phil with Barnes.
Olivia was a young artist at Bury Court Opera, where she premiered Mad King Suibhne in conjunction with ENO and with Helios Collective, and took part in workshops with the British Youth Opera and Will Kerley last summer. She studied on the Morley College Opera programme and is the inaugural recipient of the Rose Opera bursary.
Recent opera credits include: Papagena (cover, Oxford Opera); First girl (The Diary of One who Disappeared with Nicky Spence), Two Moor Festival/Momentum Now; Chorus (L'Elisir d'Amore), Random Opera: First Witch (Dido and Aeneas), Hurn Court Opera: Susanna (Nozze di Figaro), Puzzlepiece Opera: Maiden (Fliegende Hollander), Rose Opera; Annina (La Traviata), New Sussex Opera; Pitti-Sing (The Mikado), the Witch (Hansel and Gretel), Second Lady (the Magic Flute), the Monitor (Suor Angelica) with Opera Anywhere; Second Woman (Dido and Aeneas), Helios Collective; Lucy (Cheryomushki), Nancy (Albert Herring), Hermia (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Cambridge University Opera Society.
Upcoming work includes Mother Goose (The Rake's Progress, Aylesbury Opera); Second Woman (Dido and Aeneas, Opera Astoria, Painted Hall); Nancy (cover, St Paul's Opera); Zerlina (cover, Opera CoPro).
As a member of Emma Kirkby’s Dowland Works, she performs with lutenists across the country, and is a soloist with the Facade Ensemble, specialising in contemporary music, particularly Stimmung. She is also a member of St Martin's Voices at St Martin in the Fields.
Olivia is passionate about oratorio: recent solo performances include Mozart and Brahms Requiems, Pergolesi Stabat Mater, Handel Messiah, Bach Christmas Oratorio, Haydn Nelson Mass and Poulenc Gloria.
She is a founding member of the operatic trio Sorelle, reimagining the role of women in opera and exploring power and gender in some of the genre's most iconic and exciting works. Themed concerts in Oxfordshire, Stroud and London complement an array of corporate work.
She is also a founding member of Levedy, a vocal and harp quintet, who won the inaugural Carne Competition in 2020 and with the help of a Trinity Laban Innovation Award are taking their newly-commissioned song cycle, Alone Together, into prisons this summer, having performed it in Trinity College, Cambridge and St John's Smith Square. Recent projects include a Dante-inspired collaboration with Lilium SoundArt and the cultural institute of Padova, and an upcoming concert tour to Switzerland. www.levedyensemble.com
Olivia's studies are supported by Guildhall Scholarship, a Trinity Laban award, grants from the Split Infinitive Trust, the Kathleen Trust and the Yorkshire Ladies’ Council of Education, a bursary from Rose Opera and a choral scholarship at St Gabriel’s, Pimlico. She is grateful for the continued support of News UK and the Times, where she works on the news desk.
