Michael Mofidian appears on the operatic stage this season as Creon (Œdipus rex) for the Norwegian National Opera, Leporello (Don Giovanni) for Opera Vlaanderen, The Traveller (Curlew River) for Opéra National de Lorraine, Pallante (Agrippina) for Opéra de Rouen Normandie, and Osmin (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) for the Glyndebourne Festival, the latter two revived by their respective original directors Robert Carsen and Sir David McVicar.
In the 2024/25 season he made successive role debuts in the title roles of Il Turco in Italia for Glyndebourne and of Le nozze di Figaro for Welsh National Opera, as well as Masetto (Don Giovanni) in a new production at the Bayerische Staatsoper conducted by Vladimir Jurowsky. In concert he performed Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and St Matthew Passion, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, as well as making his debut as Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
In the 2023/24 season he made his debut at the Teatro Real, Madrid as Créon (Medea), returned to Covent Garden as Colline (La bohème) and Der Pfleger des Orest (Elektra), and made highly-acclaimed role debuts as Polyphemus (Acis and Galatea) for the Potsdamer Winteroper and as Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress) at the Grange Festival. In concert he performed Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the RSNO at the Edinburgh International Festival under Sir Andrew Davis, Haydn’s Creation with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner and Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.
Having made his debut at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in the Cantata in onore del sommo pontifice Pio IX in 2023, he was invited back for the 2024 Festival for the roles of Fenicio (Ermione) and Lord Sidney.
His operatic engagements in previous seasons include returns to Covent Garden as Colline (2022) and Masetto (2021), his Scottish Opera debut as Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte), his début at the Opéra de Rouen as Theseus (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), a return to the Glyndebourne Festival as Masetto while also covering Leporello, and, at the Salzburg Festival, Angelotti (Tosca) and Kuligin (Kat’a Kabanová) under the respective bâtons of Marco Armiliato and Jakub Hruša.
From 2018-2020 he was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists’ Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, performing many roles under conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Antonio Pappano and Edward Gardner and working with directors including Sir David McVicar, Christof Loy and Barrie Kosky. He was a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne in 2018 and a member of the Jeune Ensemble at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in the 2021/22 season.
He was soloist at the First Night of the BBC Proms in 2021 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska, and returned in 2023 for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth.
Recent recording highlights include Turandot as the Mandarin with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome under Sir Antonio Pappano for Warner Classics. Further discography spans a highly acclaimed performance as the First Elder in Maurice Greene’s Jephtha with Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company for Chandos Records, and a recording of songs by Scottish modernist composer Erik Chisholm alongside Iain Burnside for Delphian Records.
In recital, he has performed with pianists Keval Shah, Jâms Coleman, Sholto Kynoch, Anna Tilbrook, Julius Drake and Malcolm Martineau with numerous performances at the Wigmore Hall, the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, City Halls Glasgow and at the Oxford Lieder and Leeds Lieder festivals. He has been broadcast numerous times on BBC Radio 3.
In addition to singing he is also a composer who has written orchestral works, chamber music, songs and pieces for vocal ensemble.
He was born in Glasgow and graduated from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Pavarotti Prize in 2017. In 2018 he won the Singers’ Prize in the Royal Over-Seas League Competition and the Bruce Millar Gulliver Prize.
In addition to his native English he has a near-native-level mastery of French, and also speaks fluent Italian and German.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
STRAVINSKY: The Rake's Progress (Nick Shadow)
Grange Festival / 2024
"Best of all was Michael Mofidian as Nick Shadow. The power and seductive beauty of his voice were remarkable: in short, he inhabited the role completely, a Don Giovanni de luxe in the making."
Roger Parker, Opera Magazine
"The idyll is broken with the arrival of the Mephistophelian Nick Shadow, in the person of Michael Mofidian, dressed and bewigged in black, who sports a voice with a timbre of diamantine jet. Indeed I can’t remember a Nick Shadow - not Terfel, nor Gerald Finley - so ideally suited vocally to this devilish role. Initially, at least, he’s quite a charmer, an actor in conspiratorial rapport with his audience, who seduces us as well as Tom with his sardonic laid-back manner and elegant, athletic figure.
If Mofidian’s Shadow - terrifying in the card scene, set in what looks like an early railway tunnel (or is it a sewer?) - is this production’s primus inter pares, he is the star of a cast without a weak link."
Hugh Canning, Operalogue
"... from the moment Michael Mofidian came on stage as Nick, there was only going to be one winner. Mofidian has a huge voice, a combination of youthfulness and steel rare in a bass-baritone. To that voice, he added a stage swagger that was supremely confident whether faux-ingratiating or just plain malevolent."
David Karlin, Bachtrack
ROSSINI: Il turco in Italia (Selim)
Glyndebourne / 2024
"For this autumn season revival the casting of the young Scottish bass Michael Mofidian, a former Jette Parker Artist at Covent Garden, as the titular Turk piqued my curiosity to see if I had misjudged the staging last time round. Having recently made his Pesaro debut as both Fenicio in Ermione and, in concert, Lord Sidney in Il viaggio a Reims, his Rossini credentials are well established. His dark lyric bass voice has a saturnine timbre with a vocal twinkle-in-the-eye that suggests a born comedian […] his instrument has all the requisite agility for a coloratura bass, and as far as stage charisma is concerned, well, he has nearly everything. His body language was a sly mixture of toxic ‘Turkish’ masculinity with a wry self-deprecating charm; in the somewhat tired dance routines his alert, athletic movements made him stand out, along with the braggadocio and panache with which he wore his costume."
Hugh Canning, Opera
"The cast is extraordinarily fine, matching virtuoso vocal technique with clever characterisation and flawless comic timing […] Mofidian sums up the macho manners of Selim both in vocal terms and in his physicality."
George Hall, The Stage
"Mofidian deployed a bass that rippled with salted caramel notes; resonant and firm at the bottom and a glint to the top. Swaggering across the stage, he was unable to restrain a smile from twitching across his face at the sheer absurdity of much of the action; a compelling presence."
Dominic Lowe, Bachtrack
MENDELSSOHN: Elijah (Elijah)
Glasgow City Halls / 2025
"Michael Mofidian who sang Elijah is classed as a baritone but has a voice that slides easily into bass territory and displays great colour and musicality. It’s no surprise that he also is a fast rising international star."
Hugh Kerr, Edinburgh Music Review
MOZART: Le nozze di Figaro (Figaro)
Welsh National Opera / 2025
"In the red corner welcome Michael Mofidian’s brilliant, uninhibited Figaro. His execration of women in his finale aria, da Ponte’s equivalent of Beaumarchais’s diatribe against the whole race of aristocrats, is delivered with such superb bravura that he may expect a visit from the non-crime hate police."
Stephen Walsh, The Arts Desk
"Michael Mofidian shone as a charismatic Figaro, bringing charm and a robust baritone to the title role."
Mark Rees, South Wales Evening Post
"Christina Gansch as Susanna and Michael Mofidian as Figaro are every bit as convincing, as the servant couple who are always one step ahead of their master […] Mofidian is a busy schemer with fine comic and musical timing."
Owen Davies, Plays to See
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