Biography
“She can give life to a line like few others; her diction is marvellous, and marvellously varied; everything flows with incomparable beauty.”
Gramophone Magazine, 2024
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, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius at Windsort Festival, 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 and LIFE Victoria Barcelona, a programme of Handel with the Prague Philharmonia at Lobkowicz Palace, and she returns to Wigmore Hall with London Handel Players, Dunedin Consort, Florilegium and Toby Carr.
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.