British baritone Nicholas Mogg is currently a member of the Solo Ensemble at the Staatsoper Hamburg, where he was previously a member of the International Opera Studio. His current and recent roles include Dancairo Carmen, Baron Dauphol La Traviata, Il Commissario Imperiale Madama Butterfly, and L’Officier Dialogue des Carmélites, as well as world première performances from composers Samuel Penderbayne, Lorenzo Romano, Johannes Harneit, and Salvatore Sciarrino. In the 23/24 season, Nicholas makes several important role debuts at Staatsoper Hamburg as Ned Keene Peter Grimes, Silvio I Pagliacci, and Guglielmo Così fan tutte.
Recent concert highlights include appearances as a soloist at the Barbican Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Palau de la Música Catalana, Bozar Brussels, KKL Luzern, and the Philharmonie de Paris with conductors including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Ton Koopman, Daniel Reuss and Sir Roger Norrington. Other recent engagements include a tour of Bach’s B minor Mass and also Bach’s St John and St Matthew Passion with the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate with Holland Baroque, and Handel’s Messiah with both the Orquesta Ciudad de Valencia and the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla.
Previous roles include Dandini La Cenerentola for West Green House Opera, Aeneas Dido & Aeneas for English Touring Opera, and Don Giovanni Don Giovanni for the Royal Academy of Music.
His debut recording of music by Carl Loewe, alongside pianist Jâms Coleman, was released in December 2021 to wide-spread critical acclaim. The album has been labelled as ‘One to Watch’ by Gramophone Magazine editor Martin Cullingford and described as “instantly engaging and communicative.”
Winner of the 2017 Royal Over-Seas League Singers Section, Nicholas Mogg is a graduate of the Opera Course at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Mark Wildman and Iain Ledingham, and of Clare College, Cambridge. Nicholas is an alumnus of the National Opera Studio in the UK, where he was supported by a Young Artist Development Award through the Glyndebourne New Generation Programme. He was previously an Alvarez Young Artist at Garsington Opera.
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Harneit Silvesternacht (Enthus)
Staatsoper Hamburg (January 2023)
At the beginning of the piece, at a NYE party in the house of a politician, Enthus, fantastically played and sung with superb expressiveness by Nicholas Mogg, loses his composure when he meets his old love Angela and goes to a cellar bar instead….
Helmut Peters, Hamburger Abendblatt
Nicholas Mogg is outstanding as Enthus, as the traveller searching throughout the evening for his beloved as well as for himself.
Daniel Kaiser, NDR Kultur Journal
[Enthus]… played and sung with magnificent believability by baritone Nicholas Mogg, who also skilfully confronts the enormous tonal leaps in Harneit’s score.
André Sperber, concerti.de
Mogg shapes Enthus with just the right amount of bemusement, despair and melancholy. With his beautiful baritone, with which he only recently convinced as the Mandarino in Turandot on the main stage, he engages the audience with his performance and takes them with him through the role.
Birgit Kleinfeld, Operngestalten.de
The highly committed singing and acting septet of soloists was led by Nicholas Mogg in the role of the "travelling enthusiast" Enthus, to which he lends a baritonal sonorous vocal power alongside his stage-presence.
Wolfgang Schmitt, IOCO Kritik
Puccini Turandot (Un Mandarino)
Staatsoper Hamburg (November 2022)
Nicholas Mogg as the Mandarin confirmed my enthusiasm for former members and the work of the Hamburg International Opera Studio with his performance. Mogg convinces with his beautiful baritone as well as with his versatile joy of playing. Here he convincingly shows his fierce, even brutal, side.
Operngestalten
CD: The Other Erlking: Songs and Ballads of Carl Loewe
Champs Hill Records (November 2021)
The Lieder of Loewe is lesser-known music for many, making Mogg’s advocacy of the composer in his newly released album both a timely and delightful debut. This survey of the ’North German Schubert’ is instantly engaging and communicative… The label has a strong track record of drawing attention to artists of great promise, and we will watch the next moves Mogg makes with great interest.
Martin Cullingford, Gramophone (‘One to Watch’)
This is a fine and enjoyable debut from an outstanding young pair … Mogg and Coleman capture this world beautifully, with the baritone’s voice - relatively light but reassuringly incisive in timbre - conveying an impressive range and the pianist bringing real drama and virtuosity to the accompaniment ... it’s good to hear these pieces, too seldom represented on disc, and welcome this handsome, intelligent and beautifully recorded debut from two fine young artists.
Hugo Shirley, Gramophone
Overall, Coleman and Mogg deliver, especially in the dramatic numbers. Mogg is comfortable across the enormous range and demonstrates much of the timbral flexibility these songs need
Natasha Loges, BBC Music Magazine****
Mogg’s baritone is free and true, and, relishing the colours and contours of the German texts, he projects richly at the bottom and with ease and clarity at the top. Mogg is a natural and engaging storyteller who allows himself, like one of Dickens’ narrators, to be enchanted by his own tale, slipping into his characters’ emotions as he relives their conversations or recounts their experiences. He’s not afraid to embrace the hyperbole and sentimentality in which Loewe, again recalling Dickens, is prone to indulge, and rightly so since they fuel the dramatic and emotional surge of the songs.
Claire Seymour, Opera Today
Goethe's ballad Erlkonig set to music by Carl Loewe, or The Other Erlking as baritone Nicholas Mogg and pianist Jâms Coleman have become used to introducing this song to people who only know the famous Schubert setting. In some ways, Loewe is spookier with more of the dark forest atmosphere ... Mogg has a well-focused, dramatic baritone, great contrast at his best in the overtly theatrical songs… it's an excellent debut recital, and good to have Loewe framed so well.
Andrew McGregor commenting on the album on BBC Radio 3 Record Review
Nicholas Mogg and Jâms Coleman perform six ballads that have been part of the lieder repertoire for many years. Loewe’s writing is very effective. His songs are performed with clear lucidity by Mogg and accompanied by the subtle sensitivity of pianist Coleman… Both Mogg's warm voice and perfect diction and the charming piano playing, a refined technique and powerful sound, make any listener fall in love. The two musicians evoke the atmospheres and colors of works immersed in an exciting romantic universe.
Carme Miró, Sonograma Magazine
This is a wonderfully engaging programme, each of the bigger ballads grabs you in just the right way, with Mogg and Coleman bringing out the story-telling element (and Mogg in particular seems to relish the grisly bits, and the whole recital ends with his masterly 'Da lag Her Oluf and war tot'!), as well as enjoying the sheer variety of Loewe's talent. He is a composer who it is tricky to exactly pin down, but here he has fine advocates.
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill****
Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, recital at Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin
(August 2021)
[Mogg] combined Einsamkeit and Irrlicht from Franz Schubert's Winterreise superbly with Robert Schumann's Waldesgespräch and Loewe's Erlkönig to explore the depths of human emotion. His vocal power and convincing expressions made listening to Manchester-born, Nicholas Mogg, a first-class experience. After the break, the two top musicians gave audible and visual proof that they rightly belong to the young elite. Arias from Puccini's La Bohème and Donizetti's Don Pasquale were not only convincingly sung; the stage presence of the two briefly transformed the recital into an operatic performance.
Peter Scherrer, Norddeutsche Neueste Nachrichten
Abraham Märchen im Grand-Hotel (Albert, Grand Duke, Dryser)
Staatsoper Hamburg Studio (September 2020)
The baritone Nicholas Mogg plays Albert, the totally head-over-heels waiter who has a secret, expressively and wittily sings his love songs with a wonderful timbre without kitsch.
Daniel Kaiser, NDR
From the ensemble, baritone Nicholas Mogg proved by far the best. He pursued his love affair with more extreme gestures and, throughout the entire evening, thanks to his complete vocal commitment and tall appearance, was able to portray the many strange and comic situations to the audience.
Opera-online.com
The young baritone, Nicholas Mogg, must take on the task of performing three roles. On the one hand he is Doctor Joshua Dryer, then the decrepit and trembling Großfürst Paul, and finally the youthful hero, who at the beginning of the piece is more of an antihero, the waiter Albert. He masters each of his tasks without any difficulty. He sings his aria ‘Die schönste Rose’ with vigour and vocal shine, and when his role demands the drama to come to the fore, he allows it to do so. One wants to give the lovely but hapless, Albert, a nudge in the direction of the princess, and wishes at times he would (or could) be slightly less goofy. But that is a tiny grumble from a performance at the highest level.
Operngestalten.de
Rossini La Cenerentola (Dandini)
West Green House Opera (July 2019)
That said there was much to admire in his collaboration with Nicholas Mogg’s flamboyant Dandini attired in kilt and mismatching socks, and clearly revelling in his comic creation. Possessed with a clear, well projected voice, Mogg consistently held the ear and eye. His will be a name to watch out for.
David Truslove, Opera Today
Initially cutting a swathe in a blaze of tartan, Nicholas Mogg has a high old time as Dandini while maintaining meticulous control of his lean, resonant baritone.
Yehuda Shapiro, The Stage****
Several performances stand out in particular with Nicholas Mogg revealing a baritone of great aesthetic refinement, nuance and depth as he really relishes playing Dandini masquerading as the Prince.
Sam Smith, MusicOMH*****
National Opera Studio 40th Anniversary Concert, Cadogan Hall
(January 2019)
In the scene with Balstrode his interlocuter was Nicholas Mogg, who later appeared as Guglielmo, again showing himself to be a baritone of energy, eloquence and sophistication.
Yehuda Shapiro, Opera Magazine
Dido and Aeneas (title) / Jonas / I Will Not Speak
English Touring Opera (October 2018)
There are performances of blazing conviction by … Nicholas Mogg’s Aeneas.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian
Nicholas Mogg who is an excellent Aeneas.
Sam Smith, MusicOMH*****
The main work was Purcell’s watertight Dido and Aeneas (1689), with Sky Ingram and Nicholas Mogg assured in the title roles.
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer
Rarely does Purcell’s vivid setting of Nahum Tate’s libretto find such convincing exponents as in Sky Ingram’s impassioned Dido, Nicholas Mogg’s clearly conflicted Aeneas…each sort out the intensity of meaning contained within Purcell’s notes as well as expertly delivering the notes themselves, including the most highly decorated passages.
George Hall, Opera Now
Jonathan Dove Flight (Steward)
Royal Academy Opera (March 2018)
Nicholas Mogg...displayed [a] promising baritone voice.
Richard Fairman, Financial Times****
...baritone Nicholas Mogg as the randy Steward, big in voice and personality.
Stephen Pritchard, The Guardian****
Olivia Warburton and Nicholas Mogg were well-matched as the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed cabin crew.
Claire Seymour, Opera Magazine
Mozart Don Giovanni (Title Role),
Royal Academy Opera (November 2017)
Nicholas Mogg was a patrician Giovanni, his strong, elegant baritone conveying a confident urbanity.
Claire Seymour, Opera Magazine
Nicholas Mogg, deft, funny and confident as Giovanni. The supper scene went from hilarity to horror brilliantly, Giovanni was as romantically defiant as you could wish, the mix of jokes and seriousness was nicely judged.
Robert Thicknesse, Opera Now
At first, Nicholas Mogg’s cleanly sung Giovanni seems too nice, but as the opera progresses, a darker character emerges, becoming diabolical, almost demented.
Nick Kimberley, Evening Standard****
Nicholas Mogg Opera Repertoire
Abraham | Märchen im Grand-Hotel (Alberto) |
---|---|
Bizet | Carmen (Dancaïro) |
Britten | A Midsummer Night's Dream (Starveling) |
Dove | Flight (Steward) |
Handel | Alcina (Melisso) |
Maxwell Davies | Die Beiden Fiedler (Gavin) |
Monteverdi | Orfeo (title role)* |
Mozart | Così fan tutte (Guglielmo)* |
Poulenc | Les Dialogues des Carmélites (L'Officier) |
Puccini | Madama Butterfly (Il Commissario Imperiale) |
Purcell | Dido and Aeneas (Aeneas) |
Rossini | La Cenerentola (Dandini) |
Offenbach | Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Schlemihl) |
Rossini | Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Figaro)* |
Shostakovich | Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Teacher) |
Strauss, J | Die Fledermaus (Falke) |
Strauss, R | Ariadne auf Naxos (Perückenmacher, Harlekin*) |
Verdi | La Traviata (Il Barone Dauphol) |
Wagner | Lohengrin (Dritter Brabantische Edler) |
Weill | Die Dreigroschenoper (Herr Peachum) |
* denotes roles studied |
Nicholas Mogg Concert Repertoire
Bach, C.P.E | Johannes-Passion (1772) H. 785 |
---|---|
Bach, J.C. | Wie bist du denn, O Gott |
Bach, J.S | Christ lag in Todesbanden BWV 4 |
Beethoven | Missa Solemnis |
Brahms | Requiem |
Britten | War Requiem |
Charpentier | Te Deum |
Duruflé | Requiem |
Dvořák | Mass in D major |
Fauré | Requiem |
Handel | Dettingen Te Deum |
Haydn | Nelson Mass |
Hummel | Missa Solemnis in C |
Kodaly | Missa Brevis |
McDowall | Stabat Mater |
Mendelssohn | Elijah |
Monteverdi | Vespers of 1610 |
Mozart | Krönungsmesse |
Rossini | Petite Messe Solennelle |
Tippett | A Child of Our Time |
Weill | Das Berliner Requiem |
Nicholas Mogg Song Repertoire
Beethoven | Adelaide |
---|---|
Bennett | Songs before Sleep |
Berg | Schliesse mir die Augen beiden |
Brahms | Deutsches Volkslieder (Selections) |
Bridge | Come to me in my Dreams |
Britten | Folksongs (Selections) |
Butterworth | Six Songs from 'A Shropshire Lad' |
Cornelius | Weihnachts Lieder |
Dowland | Flow my Tears |
Duparc | Chanson triste |
Fauré | Après un rêve |
Finzi | Let us Garlands Bring |
Gurney | By a Bierside |
Griffey | World of Ice: A Cycle (World Première) |
Hahn | A Chloris |
Haydn | Six Original Canzonettas, Book 2 (Selections) |
Ibert | Quatre Chansons de Don Quichotte |
Loewe | Die Mutter an der Wiege |
Mahler | Lob des Hohen Verstands |
Poulenc | Priez pour paix |
Quilter | Go lovely rose |
Schönberg | Das Buch der hängenden Gärten |
Schubert | An die Leier |
Schumann | Belsatzar |
Symonds | In the Months of Love |
Vaughan Williams | Five Mystical Songs |
Warlock | Bethlehem Down |
Wolf | Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Michelangelo |
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