Johnny Herford

Johnny Herford is studying on the Royal Academy of Music’s Opera Course with Mark Wildman and Audrey Hyland.

He is a busy recitalist and has sung a wide range of repertoire in German, French and English. Highlights have included performances on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’, a programme of Fauré songs at a recital at Kings Place, London, Schumann’s Myrthen at the Holywell Music Room for the Oxford Lieder Festival, and an appearance in the inaugural London English Song Festival with William Vann. Future engagements include selected Schubert songs at the Wigmore Hall as part of the RAM’s prestigious Song Circle and a performance of Winterreise at the Forge, Camden. He was the winner of the 2010 English Song Competition and of the 2010 Joan Chisell Schumann Prize at the RAM.

For Royal Academy Opera he created the role of Hans Scholl in the world premiere of Peter Maxwell’s Opera Kommilitonen, and has sung the roles of Peachum in Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper and Traveller in Britten’s Curlew River. In March 2012 he will sing Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.

Previously he studied Music at Cambridge University, graduating with a First. At Cambridge he also appeared in various opera productions, as Nero and Quintus in Three Portraits of Nero and as Directeur in Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias. More recent operatic roles have included Morales in Bizet’s Carmen, Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and King Albanact in Orpheus Britannicus, a staged performance of Purcell’s theatrical music at Cadogan Hall.

Solo performances with orchestras include Haydn’s Seasons, Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, Handel’s Israel in Egypt and Messiah, Bach’s Passions and Christmas Oratorio, Tippett’s The Child of Our Time, Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, Brahms’ German Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Stravinsky’s Les Noces.

Johnny is grateful to be a Sickle Foundation Scholar, and has also been generously supported by the John Lewis Partnership, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Josephine Baker Trust.