Carola Darwin

Carola Darwin combines a career as an opera and concert singer with research and writing about music. She trained at Royal Northern College of Music, and went on to gain a PhD from the University of Sheffield. She is now an Academic Professor at the Royal College of Music, where she teaches Music History. Her research into the Viennese composer Johanna Müller-Hermann is part of BBC Radio 3’s Five Women Composers project. Operatic roles include Fox (The Cunning Little Vixen, Surrey Opera), Countess (The Marriage of Figaro, Opera! Festival, Netherlands), Berta, (The Barber of Seville, Opera East) Sofia (I Lombardi, UCOpera) She has also sung Governess (The Turn of the Screw) Mimi (La Bohème) Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Pat Nixon (Nixon in China). Recent concert work includes a series with the Hermitage String Quartet, Héloise in Maconchy’s Héloise and Abelard, and solos for Park Lane Group’s Celebration for Elizabeth (Purcell Room). Her multi-media one-woman show The Vienna Show: Music and Gender in fin-de-siècle Vienna has been seen in Winnipeg, Canada and also in London, Sheffield and Liverpool. Future projects include collaborating on a song-cycle about evolution and the environment, and writing a book: The ‘I’ of the Other: Women, opera and autonomy in Mahler’s Vienna.