Opera Scotland

Ten years of Emerging Artists

Posted 3 Oct 2019

Scottish Opera has welcomed a talented group of Emerging Artists for the 2019/20 Season: Samuel Bordoli, Arthur Bruce, Jasmine Clark, Charlie Drummond, Mark Nathan, Michael Papadopoulos and Lucy Walters. Our photograph (left) by James Glossop shows four of them - Arthur Bruce, Charlie Drummond, Jasmine Clark and Michael Papadopolous.

What is the Emerging Artists programme?

The Scottish Opera Emerging Artists programme was launched in 2009 and offers young artists a period of full-time work with the Company to help them launch their careers.

Initially set up to nurture outstanding young singers, the programme now also includes positions for a repetiteur, costume trainee, a composer in residence, and, for the first time, an associate producer.

Previous Emerging Artists include soprano Jennifer France, repetiteur Jonathon Swinard, baritone Ben McAteer and composers Gareth Williams and Lliam Paterson.

10th Anniversary

Alex Reedijk, Scottish Opera General Director said: ‘It’s a great pleasure to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Emerging Artists programme, which has over 40 alumni, with many of those having gone on to perform all over the UK.

The incredibly flexible programme helps a tremendous breadth of artists at the start of their careers through an immersive opera company experience where they can draw on all the resources available to strengthen their skills, preparing them for a life in the performing arts.

I also have to acknowledge the generosity of our supporters who have from day one been genuinely delighted to help support the Emerging Artists, and how much that support has grown over 10 years.’

Samuel Bordoli, ARAM

Samuel returns for a third year as composer in residence. In the 2018/19 Season, he composed an Overture and To Music for the Autumn 2018 Opera Highlights tour, as well as Le trésor des humbles for soprano and orchestra, premiered in March at Aberdeen’s Music Hall. During the Company’s 2017/18 Season he composed Wings and three piano interludes for the Opera Highlights tour, and Grace Notes to complement the Company’s production of Ariadne auf Naxos.

Samuel studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he was the Mendelssohn Scholar. He was mentored by Peter Maxwell Davies for nine years. His broad output has included a chamber opera, Amerika, performed at the Tête à Tête opera festival in London, and a choral anthem, The Great Silence, premiered at the Windsor Festival for the Queen’s 90th Birthday. His music theatre piece Belongings was premiered on the Caledonian Sleeper between Aberdeen and London. He has also composed four Live Music Sculptures, site-specific compositions for London landmarks, including Tower Bridge, the Monument and St Paul’s Cathedral, and last year he co-produced Planets 2018, a new ‘Planets Suite’ performed inside planetariums across the UK.

This Season, Samuel is working on an original short digital opera film and a prelude to A Midsummer Night's Dream entitled Hermia’s Nightmare, and he composed a new piece for Opera Highlights. For his work at Scottish Opera, Samuel was nominated for the ‘One to Watch’ Award at the 2018 Sunday Herald Culture Awards.  

Arthur Bruce

Scottish baritone Arthur Bruce is The Robertson Trust Scottish Opera Emerging Artist 2019/20. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Alexander Gibson Opera School, the Royal Northern College of Music and English National Opera's Opera Works programme, Arthur was a member of Scottish Opera Young Company (formerly Connect).

Arthur has performed roles with Bampton Classical Opera, Berlin Opera Academy, Saffron Opera Group, Opera Eos, Edinburgh Grand Opera, London Young Sinfonia, Edinburgh Players Opera Group and Bowdon Festival Opera. He is also a Britten-Pears Young Artist.

This Season at Scottish Opera, Arthur is performing in Amadeus & The Bard: 18th Century Cosmic Brothers, a new production about the links between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Robert Burns. He also goes on tour with Opera Highlights in the Spring, and performs in Iris, Utopia, Limited and The Gondoliers which tours to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh and London.

Jasmine Clark

Elizabeth Salvesen Costume Trainee Jasmine Clark will work on Scottish Opera’s Season 2019/20 productions in the Costume Department, headed by John Liddell. Graduating in 2017 with a 1st Class BA (Hons) Costume and Performance Design (Costume Interpretation) degree from Arts University Bournemouth with a particular interest in historical costume, Jasmine has worked on a number of operas, musicals, short films and television programmes. These include La bohème at the Royal Opera House, The Pilgrim’s Progress at Royal Northern College of Music, Les Misérables at Birmingham Hippodrome and the BBC drama Father Brown. 

Former Student Head of Arts University Bournemouth Costume Archive, in her spare time Jasmine has volunteered as a Tattershall Tailor at National Trust Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire, creating historically accurate medieval costumes for staff to wear at events.

Charlie Drummond

Soprano Charlie Drummond is an alumna of King’s College London (English Literature), the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Alexander Gibson Opera School and the National Opera Studio. She is a Samling Young Artist and the recipient of several awards including the Help Musicians UK Tutton Award, an Independent Opera Voice Scholarship, the Musicians’ Company Silver Medal and the Bruce Millar Gulliver Prize.

Charlie has performed with companies including Longborough Festival Opera, British Youth Opera and Raucous Rossini. She also has a keen interest in contemporary opera and has premiered the role of Serena Farage in the new opera The Secretary Turned CEO (Lucid Arts), and performed in the world premiere of Simoon by Erik Chisholm (Music Co-OPERAtive Scotland).  This Season at Scottish Opera she will perform in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Iris, The Gondoliers, Utopia, Limited and the Company’s Opera Highlights Autumn tour.

Mark Nathan

Baritone Mark Nathan studied at the Alexander Gibson Opera School, having graduated with distinction from a Master's at London’s Royal College of Music. He completed an undergraduate Music degree at Birmingham University. Mark has worked with opera companies including Welsh National Opera, Opera Loki, Hampstead Garden Opera and Winterbourne Opera, performing roles including Don Giovanni, Papageno, Marcello and Dr Falke. He has also appeared in musicals including Guys and Dolls and Into the Woods.  

Mark is in demand as a recitalist and oratorio soloist, and is a keen lyricist, having written several musicals, and a collection of children’s poems entitled ‘Riddle Me This’, which has been set to music by Ronald Corp for the New London Children’s Choir. Mark plays the cello, piano, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, accordion, and the banjo. He plays in chamber ensembles, orchestras and pit bands. This season at Scottish Opera he will perform in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Gondoliers and the Opera Highlights Autumn tour.  

Michael Papadopoulos

London-born repetiteur and conductor Michael Papadopoulos is the 2019/20 Emerging Artist repetiteur. He trained at the National Opera Studio and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, having previously read Music at Trinity College Oxford. As a repetiteur, he has worked at Opera Holland Park (La traviata, Isabeau, Il segreto di Susanna), where he was Young Artist Repetiteur for the 2018 season, and British Youth Opera (Don Giovanni), as well as working on Julian Philllips’ The Tale of Januarie at GSMD. 

Michael's recent conducting projects include a new opera by Edward Lambert for the 2019 Tête à Tête festival (Apollo’s Mission), Bach’s St John Passion, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, and Handel’s Messiah (with the choir and musicians of St Paul’s Knightsbridge), and Daniel Saleeb’s Occo’s Eternal Act at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This Season at Scottish Opera, Michael will be working on Susanna’s Secret, Tosca, Nixon in China, The Gondoliers and Utopia, Limited, as assistant conductor on Iris and as Music Director/Pianist on the Opera Highlights Spring tour.

Lucy Walters

Lucy Walters is the Emerging Artist associate producer. After studying music at the University of Bristol and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Lucy interned at Wigmore Hall where she assisted the Learning Team with their administration and events. She then joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as the Chorus Projects Officer, primarily working with the CBSO’s family of symphonic choruses on large-scale choral projects, performances with other orchestras, and chorus international touring. While at the CBSO, Lucy helped to co-ordinate the 2014 BBC Proms Youth Choir (Britten’s War Requiem with the CBSO and Andris Nelsons) before managing the project in 2015 (Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with Vienna Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle).

Since leaving the CBSO in 2016, Lucy has enjoyed refocusing on her passion for Opera in the Opera North Planning Team where she managed residencies for the National Opera Studio and Royal Northern College of Music. Jointly appointed by Opera Ventures and Scottish Opera, Lucy is primarily working on the future life of the Company’s co-production of Breaking the Waves over the next year.

Opportunities to hear these performers in action

The Emerging Artist singers and repetiteur will perform in four recitals this year; at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh in October, University of St Andrews in November, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of Glasgow in January.

Details to be advised.