Helen Charlston was recently a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2021-23), and finalist of the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards for which she was a recipient of the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize. In 2023 she won a Gramophone Award for Best Concept Album, and collected the Vocal award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards, both for her second Delphian album: Battle Cry: the only recording that year to win at both ceremonies.
This season, Helen makes her debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu as Sesto in Calixto Bieito’s production of Giulio Cesare conducted by William Christie, and sings Handel’s Messiah at BBC Proms with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bach’s St John Passion with the Academy of Ancient Music, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with WDR Köln under Simon Halsey, and also with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Václav Luks, and Bach’s Magnificat with RIAS Kammerchor under Justin Doyle in South Korea. In recital she performs Battle Cry with Toby Carr at Brucknerhaus Linz, with Sholto Kynoch at the Oxford International Song Festival, a programme of Handel with the Prague Philharmonia at Lobkowicz Palace, and she returns to Wigmore Hall.
Other opera appearances have included her debut at Versailles Royal Opera singing Dido in Purcell Dido & Aeneas, at Grange Festival singing Sorceress/Spirit in the same opera and most recently she covered the title role in Charpentier Médée at Opéra national de Paris. She has also toured two semi-staged productions with Les Arts Florissant and William Christie singing Dido and Rosmira in Handel Partenope across France and Canada.
Recent appearances on the concert platform include premieres of a new song cycle written for her as a companion piece to Schumann Dichterliebe by Héloïse Werner at the Oxford International Song Festival and Wigmore Hall, Bach B minor mass with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Richard Egarr, as well as Mendelssohn’s Elijah
at the BBC Proms with Maxim Emelyanychev, Britten’s Phaedra live in concert with BBC Philharmonic, Handel's Messiah with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, and Britten Sinfonia, Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus with the RIAS Kammerchor at the Berlin Philharmonie with Justin Doyle, Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden gesellen with BBC Philharmonic and Irene in Handel Theodora with the Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
‘Notes of Old’ with Sholto Kynoch, LIFE Victoria Barcelona Festival
(June 2025)
...both artists unraveled the repertoire with such rapport and exquisiteness that the first half was a lyrical haven of musical excellence. Both performed each piece perfectly, Helen Charlston with a homogeneous, warmly beautiful, perfectly controlled instrument, with good projection and perfectly balanced high notes and carefully crafted diction in English, German, French, and Spanish, as well as the precise expressiveness in each of the compositional styles.
Fernando Sans Riviere, OperaActual
Handel Giulio Cesare (Sesto)
Gran Teatre del Liceu (May 2025)
Also standing out in her Barcelona debut was British mezzo-soprano Helen Chariston as a remarkable Sesto, with great projection and solid technique, with a voice that was somewhat strident at the beginning but which became more tempered throughout the extensive score.
Fernando Sans Riviere, OperaActual
In the rest of the cast, of the same high level, we note in particular the mezzo Helen Charlston who plays a magnificently sung Sesto, between dejection and excitement…
Jean-Marcel Humbert, Forum Opera
Dedicated both on stage and musically from the outset… with an undeniable personality, the feeling is that we are before a singer with an important future
Antoni Colomer, Platea Magazine
CD: ‘If the fates allow’ with Sounds Baroque
BIS2734 (May 2025)
Charlston’s mezzo is a quality instrument: absolute purity and precision allied to a sober beauty of tone, with a wonderful charry edge to the bottom register.
Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone
[Charlston] is someone who acts fully with her vocal armoury, and we can see this in the way she does not only project her voice with prettiness and fluency... In 'What a Sad Fate is Mine' we experience her impressive musicality as she floats the uneven phrases seamlessly across the repetitious three-bar ground bass, and with her rich tone, sometimes almost a contralto, fully under control. Helen Charlston is a special singer.
Anthony Pryer, BBC Music Magazine****
Take Charlston’s singing of ‘Morpheus thou gentle god’ by Daniel Purcell...Charlston rises to these demands superbly, bringing the song to a terrifying peroration on the final word ‘destroy’... One is given the impression that Charlston has thought deeply and carefully about every word she sings and never forgetting, or letting us forget, that in Purcell’s day this repertoire was often sung by actor-singers... Here are British artists performing English music to as near perfection as one has any right to expect.
Brian Robins, Early Music Review
A really expressive and rich voice - she relishes this repertoire’…..They play two tracks from the album and later go on to say ’there’s a rich melancholy to the voice that just fits this music perfectly.
BBC Radio 3 - Record Review
Bach St Matthew Passion, Irish Baroque Orchestra
St Patrick’s Cathedral (April 2025)
…it was always a given that the great Helen Charlston would do things differently, but just as beautifully, in the crucial "Erbarme dich"… I could have listened to the eight voices singing simply chorales all night: superlative delivery from folk who are also born soloists.
David Nice, The Arts Desk*****
Handel Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra
St George’s Hanover Square (March 2025)
... it was Pleasure in the shape of mezzo-in-a-thousand Helen Charlston who held us captive... This singer is decisively among the greats of our time.
David Nice, The Arts Desk****
...Charlston’s weightier and nuanced voice. Charlston was decked out in a sparkling dress as befitting her character of Pleasure, and her performance of ‘Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa’, which was later to be recast as ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ in Rinaldo, was an undoubted highlight of the evening...
Sam Smith, MusicOMH*****
CD: Weldon: The Judgment of Paris, Academy of Ancient Music
AAM046 (March 2025)
Helen Charlston (Juno) swaggers and swells, darkening her timbres and flexing her vocal muscle...
Berta Joncus, BBC Music Magazine****
The proud Juno (or Hera) is sung by Helen Charlston, imperious in her repeated injunction ‘Beware’.
Richard Lawrence, Gramophone
‘Notes of Old’ recital with Sholto Kynoch, Temple Church
(February 2025)
Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston just gets better and better, both as singer and as actor… It was a delight to witness the consummate ease with which – perhaps through her regular work as a part of Les Arts Florissants – Charlston now steps so boldly and happily forth into the French 17th century… Helen Charlston’s acting…is increasingly authentic, assured and clearly comes from deep… There was another reminder of quite how truly mesmerising Charlston’s musicality can be in the encore, Purcell’s “Evening Hymn”. Her control, legato, the flow and the shaping of everything, the pacing of the ending: it’s just all so good. The perfect trill and the gloriously held final note – I could have written the review about just that – set the seal on a fine evening of song, which also gave a fascinating snapshot of the ways in which Helen Charlston’s many-faceted artistry continues to develop.
Sebastian Scotney, The Arts Desk****
Reynaldo Hahn's Néère setting poem by Leconte de Lisle about invoking the past, but here given real presence by Helen Charlston's plangent, unfolding line over Hahn's throbbing piano, a texture very redolent of the composer. The song showed off Charlston's wonderfully focused sense of line, the sculptural quality in her performance that was amplified by the acoustics of Temple Church (not necessarily the most obvious place for a song recital). This song flowed almost seamlessly in to Monteverdi's Si dolce e'l tormento (So sweet is the torment) where we seemed to have similar textures but to very different effect. Here Charlston delivered magnificent words and fully integrated text and music to intense effect… The two performers drew us into to their fascinating world of influences and connections, a real duo recital as voice and piano complemented and echoed each other.
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Bach B minor mass, London Handel Players
Wigmore Hall (February 2025)
Helen Charlston’s voice is like a controlled, honed edge cutting through cream. As expected, her account of Agnus Dei was sans pareil (the descent from that clarion E-flat to the pianissimissimo close of the movement was the highlight of the evening).
Barry Creasy, MusicOMH*****
Handel Jephtha, Wimbledon International Music Festival
(November 2024)
…and Helen Charlston, in particular, gave performances which really lifted off the page and conveyed the essence of the drama… Helen Charlston's first appearance as Storge established itself with a beautifully intimate account of 'In gentle murmurs will I mourn', yet 'Scenes of horror' was vividly compelling, particularly when preceded with such a strong recitative. In Act Two, her 'First perish thou' had all the intensity and focus one could desire, with an account of 'Let other creatures die' contrasting anger with tenderness to striking effect.
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Handel Messiah, BBC Proms, Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Royal Albert Hall (September 2024)
…mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, with beautiful tone and subtle dynamics… [in] “Behold, and see”, Charlston shone.
Nick Boston, Bachtrack
Helen Charlston Opera Repertoire
| Britten | Albert Herring (Florence Pike) |
|---|---|
| Bernstein | Trouble in Tahiti (Dinah) |
| Dove | Tobias and the Angel (Sara) |
| Eccles | Semele (Juno) |
| Handel | Semele (Ino) |
| Monteverdi | Ballo delle ingrate (Venere) |
| Purcell | Dido and Aeneas (First Witch) |
| Rhiannon Randle | Dido is Dead (Dido) premiere |
| Tchaikovsky | Eugene Onegin (Olga) |
| Tom Smail | Blue Electric (Anna) premiere |
Helen Charlston Baroque Recital Material
| Byrd | Songs with Viol Consort: |
|---|---|
| Handel | Solo Cantatas (continuo only): |
| Monteverdi | Lamento d’Arianna |
| Purcell | Bess of Bedlam |
| Strozzi | Il Romeo |
| Telemann | Ihr Völker Hort |
Helen Charlston Song/Lieder Repertoire
| Berg | Sieben frühe Lieder |
|---|---|
| Brahms | Various, including: |
| Britten | Charm of Lullabies |
| Elgar | Sea Pictures (with orchestra and piano) |
| Haydn | Arianna a Naxos |
| Schubert | Various, including |
| Schumann | Frauenliebe und -leben (Op. 42) |
| Clara Schumann | Die gute Nacht, die ich sage dir |
| Tchaikovsky | Again as before alond |
Helen Charlston Oratorio Repertoire
| J.S. Bach | B Minor Mass |
|---|---|
| Beethoven | Symphony No. 9 |
| Buxtehude | Membra jesu nostri |
| Durufle | Requiem |
| Dvorak | Stabat Mater |
| Handel | Dixit Dominus |
| Haydn | Harmoniemesse |
| Mendelssohn | Elijah |
| Mozart | Coronation Mass |
| Pergolesi | Stabat Mater |
| Rutter | Feel the Spirit |
| Scarlatti | Missa para o Santissimo Natal |
| Stravinsky | Cantata |
| Tippett | A Child of our Time |
| Vivaldi | Gloria |
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