Charlotte Bowden

Charlotte Bowden

Charlotte is a young London based soprano who is currently studying at the RCM as the Linda Beeley Scholar. She is a Help Musicians UK Ian Fleming Award holder and is grateful for the support of the Josephine Baker Trust. Recent solo engagements have included Mozart Exultate Jubilate and Requiem, Haydn The Creation, Bach B minor mass, St John Passion, Magnificat, and Cantata 51, Vivaldi Nulla in Mundo Pax, Handel Messiah and Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day, Rossini Stabat Mater and Petite Messe Sollenelle, and Mahler Symphony No. 4.

During her undergraduate Charlotte was a regular soloist in the prestigious Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Cantata Series. She sang in the final concert of the Oxford Lieder Festival’s Schubert Project with Sarah Walker and was awarded First Prize in both the Marjorie Thomas Art of Song Prize and the Michael Head Prize at the RAM. She is a 2018 Britten-Pears Young Artist having studied the title role in Handel Theodora with Sarah Connolly and Christian Curnyn in March.

Operatic roles include the title roles in Acis and Galatea, Semele, Theodora and Venus and Adonis, and Belinda Dido and Aeneas, Ariel The Tempest, and Cupid and She King Arthur. She has also performed the role of Bridesmaid in Der Freischütz with Sir Mark Elder and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Royal Festival Hall. This season Charlotte has been understudying with ETO for their Baroque Triple Bill. With a keen interest in new music, she created the role of Variable 4 in Bofan Ma’s chamber opera This Is No Opera and recently gave the UK premiere of Stephen Goss’ Songs of Ophelia for soprano and guitar.

She has performed in public masterclasses with Dame Felicity Lott and Sophie Daneman for the London Song Festival, Dame Ann Murray at the RCM, in the Royal Academy of Music Sterndale Bennett masterclass with Anne Howells, with Dame Emma Kirkby for the Incorporated Society of Musicians, and with Chen Reiss at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Future engagements include Handel Messiah at Snape Maltings, Bach St Matthew Passion at Salisbury Cathedral, and Bach Magnificat and Haydn The Creation for the Leith Hill Music Festival as well as a series of Baroque recitals in December with Eboracum Baroque.