Helen Charlston

Mezzo-soprano

"As a poised Lucinda, Helen Charlston’s distinctive mezzo stood out."

Rebecca Franks, The Times

"The highlight is Helen Charlston’s mesmerising delivery of ‘Leget Euch’."

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone

"Helen Charlston used her glinting tone to demonstrate the remarkable expressiveness of Telemann’s recitatives."

John Allison, The Telegraph

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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.

Schumann and Mendelssohn recital with the Consone Quartet, Music at Paxton

(July 2024)

Charlston’s smooth tone blended gloriously with Heine’s dreamy verse [Auf Flügeln des Gesanges]... In this delightful recital with string quartet, Charlston with her creamy toned voice was assured and relished the challenges of the settings, especially the more intimate texts... Charlston displayed excellent diction and persuasive phrasing, providing a level of expression that demonstrated her attention to the meaning of the text.

Michael Cookson, Seen and Heard International

The full-bodied effect of the gut-stringed instruments and the strong alto voice is an immediate delight and continues to give pleasure throughout.

Kate Calder, Edinburgh Music Review

‘The Honour of William Byrd’, Chelys Consort of Viols

Cambridge Early Music Festival (February 2024)

Helen Charlston’s voice was the Consort’s perfect accompaniment… Helen Charlston, outstanding throughout the concert, was at her absolute best when singing some of these lengthier, elegiac poems to which she lent a noble and compelling seriousness: ‘With Lilies White’, ‘Fair Britain Isle’, ‘Come To Mee Griefe For Ever’. To the final words of Byrd’s ‘Ye Sacred Muses’, his elegy on the death of Thomas Tallis (‘Tallis is dead and Music dies’), she convincingly transmitted the emotion of Byrd’s own grief at the irreplaceable loss of his friend.

John Gilroy, Cambridge Independent

CD: ‘How Are the Mighty Fallen: Choral Music By Giovanni Bononcini’, The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, Academy of Ancient Music

(May 2024)

All four pieces [of Bononcini] receive top-notch premiere recordings… Helen Charlston contributes cantabile plangency (‘Dignare Domine’)

David Vickers, Gramophone

Glories of English Song, Wimbledon International Music Festival

(November 2023)

Charlston’s voice is truly exceptional. It is both lithe and multifaceted rather than opulent, which makes it ideal for the song repertory. The way she can modulate between emotional contrasts within a phrase, drawing on a variety of tonal colours in response to the text, is little short of miraculous… She conjured the sense of nature’s beauty within a dreamscape in a pair of Hardy settings by Gerald Finzi.

Barry Millington, The Standard****

A Poet’s Love with Sholto Kynoch, Oxford International Song Festival

(October 2023)

Charlston has a superbly clear timbre, exemplary intonation and diction, and an admirable way of bringing out the core emotions of these Heine settings, whether the intense sadness of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Schwanenlied or the rage and bitterness of so many Dichterliebe songs, where Kynoch supplied notable strokes of disruptive accentuation.

Richard Morrison, The Times****

Charlston sang Werner’s haunting, lyrical vocal line exquisitely, alert to every nuance of the text, including spoken interjections in English, amusingly turning on its head the line “Yet never a word would be spoken”.

Her radiant expressiveness reached its peak in Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Op 48, Heine’s romantic journey through bliss and disillusion towards apparent resignation and resolution. With supremely sensitive playing from Kynoch, Charlston made us struggle with her over all these emotional hurdles in a superb performance, both exhausting and elating.

Stephen Pritchard, The Observer*****

Bach B minor mass, Scottish Chamber Orchestra,

Usher Hall Edinburgh (October 2023)

But the real surprise, and extraordinary revelation of the evening, was the mezzo-soprano voice of Helen Charlston, heard in "Qui sedes a dextra" and latterly in the gorgeous Agnus Dei. This is a voice of mysterious depths, and luscious texture, produced seemingly without effort, sounding at times close to a counter-tenor but without the latter’s sense of artificiality. It seems like a contradiction to say that a voice that is so unusual should also be quite sublime, but it is true… The soulful Agnus Dei leaves you wanting more, especially with Charlston singing…

Christopher Lambton, The Arts Desk

With a luxury line-up of five top-notch vocal soloists… this was always going to be a Bach B minor mass to remember… The lusciously liquid tones of mezzo Helen Charlston provided an ideal vehicle for the deliberate tread of the thoughtful penultimate ‘Angus Dei’.

David Kettle, The Scotsman*****

CD: Purcell Dido & Aeneas, La Nuova Música

Pentatone PTC5187032 (September 2023)

…with mezzo Helen Charlston (a recent Dido for Les Arts Florissants) a luxurious First Witch

Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone

CD: The Honor of William Byrd with Chelys Consort of Viols

BIS2663 (August 2023)

[Charlston] can give life to a line like few others; her diction is marvellous, and marvellously varied; everything flows with incomparable beauty.

Gramophone

Whether or not these vocal works were meant to be sung by male singers is debateable, but Helen Charlston’s rich, deep timbre make such distinctions irrelevant. Supple, controlled and vibrato free, she is sympathetically supported by a combination of treble, tenor and bass viols, which come into their own in Byrd’s complex but rhythmically appealing Fantasias.

John-Pierre Joyce, BBC Music Magazine****

Played by the Chelys Consort and flawlessly sung by the mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, the whole thing is beautifully done.

Erica Jeal, The Guardian

Purcell Dido & Aeneas (Sorceress), The Grange Festival

(June 2023)

Meanwhile, aided by a gang of sinister witches determined to bring destruction to Dido and her city, Helen Charleston’s Sorceress infused menace into her mezzo

George Hall, Opera Now

As the Sorceress, Helen Charlston – striding the stage in black leather and boots – is terrifically imperious and wicked.

Claire Seymour, Opera Today

Helen Charlston's performance as the Sorceress was truly remarkable. Without a silly voice in sight and looking a million dollars in leather dress and heels, she commanded the stage from her first entrance - this was pure Cruella de Vil with an added sense of glee. Kirsty Hopkins and Katy Hill made gleeful, hyperactive witches, eager minions for Charlston's Sorceress to command. Charlston played the Spirit too, the Sorceress in disguise rather than a pseudo-mythic figure.

Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill

Mendelssohn Elijah, BBC Proms, Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Royal Albert Hall (July 2023)

The excellent mezzo Helen Charlston

Richard Morrison, The Times****

The star of the show, however, was the mezzo, Helen Charlston. The concentrated syrup of her voice made for an Angel full of tender compassion, and ‘Though they are by him redeemed’ was overflowing with sweet yearning; for her Jezebel, though, she found heft in her chest voice and a steely edge to the top of her range, giving us the consummate ‘evil queen’.

Barry Creasy, MusicOMH

…the soloists were beyond compare… the silvery grace of mezzo Helen Charlston

Michael Church, The Scotsman*****

Helen Charlston brought great beauty of tone and sense of line to her moments as the Angel, creating a significant effect in a small moment. Her aria 'Woe unto them' was plangently expressive and very moving, whilst as the Queen, Charlston was highly trenchant and implacable.

Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill

Helen Charlston Opera Repertoire

Britten

Albert Herring (Florence Pike)
Rape of Lucretia (Bianca)

Bernstein

Trouble in Tahiti (Dinah)

Dove

Tobias and the Angel (Sara)

Eccles

Semele (Juno)

Handel

Semele (Ino)
Venceslao (Lucinda)

Monteverdi

Ballo delle ingrate (Venere)
Il ritorno d'ulisse in patria (Penelope)
L’Orfeo (Messaggera / Proserpina)

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:
Come to me grief forever
Lulla Lullaby
O God that guides the cheerful Sun Out of the Orient Crystal Skies
Thou, poet’s friend
With Lillies White
Wretched Albinius
Ye Sacred Muses (Tallis is dead)

Handel

Solo Cantatas (continuo only):
Ho Fuggito Amor
Nel Dolce Tempo
Stanco di pui soffrire

Solo Cantata (with obbligato instrument):
Mi Palpitar il Cor

Duet Cantatas:
Fronda Leggiera
Sono liete fortunato
Tanti Strali al sen mi schocchi
+ Various operatic arias

Monteverdi

Lamento d’Arianna
Lettera Amoroso
Si dolce tormento
Voglio di vita uscir

Purcell

Bess of Bedlam
Dido’s Lament
Fly Swift Ye Hours
I love and I must
If Music be the Food of Love
O Solitude
What a sad fate

Strozzi

Il Romeo
L’eraclito Amoroso

Telemann

Ihr Völker Hort

Helen Charlston Song/Lieder Repertoire

Berg

Sieben frühe Lieder
Vier Gesänge (Op. 2)

Brahms

Various, including:
An eine Äolsharfe
Die Mainnacht
Feldeinsamkeit
Im Garten am Seegestade
O kühler Wald
Ständchen
Von ewiger Liebe

Britten

Charm of Lullabies
Various folksong settings

Elgar

Sea Pictures (with orchestra and piano)

Haydn

Arianna a Naxos

Schubert

Various, including
Das Fischermadchen
Der Doppelgänger
Der Fischer
Des Fischers Liebesgluck
Die Forelle
Erlafsee
Fischerweise
Lachen und Weinen
Liebhaber in allen gestalten
Meeres Stille
Nacht und Träume
Romanze

Schumann

Frauenliebe und -leben (Op. 42)
Gedichte von Maria Stuart (op. 135)

Clara Schumann

Die gute Nacht, die ich sage dir
Die Stille Lotusblume
Liebst du um Schonheit

Tchaikovsky

Again as before alond
Lullaby in the Storm
My genius, my angel, my friend
None by the Lonely Heart Serenade

Helen Charlston Oratorio Repertoire

J.S. Bach

B Minor Mass
Cantatas: BWV 4, 34, 40, 41, 43, 52, 54, 64, 82, 106, 109, 133, 134, 161, 170, 182
Christmas Oratorio (English and German)
Easter Oratorio
Magnificat in D
Mass in A major
Matthew Passion
St John Passion (English and German)

Beethoven

Symphony No. 9

Buxtehude

Membra jesu nostri

Durufle

Requiem

Dvorak

Stabat Mater

Handel

Dixit Dominus
Israel in Egypt
Jephtha
Messiah
Nisi Dominus
Theodora

Haydn

Harmoniemesse
Nelson Mass
Paukenmesse
Stabat Mater
St Nicholas Mass

Mendelssohn

Elijah
Lobgesang (Symphony No. 2)

Mozart

Coronation Mass
Requiem
Solemn Vespers
Vesperae solennes de Dominica

Pergolesi

Stabat Mater

Rutter

Feel the Spirit

Scarlatti

Missa para o Santissimo Natal

Stravinsky

Cantata
Les Noces
Mass

Tippett

A Child of our Time

Vivaldi

Gloria

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