About

James Atkinson was a 2023-2025 BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and the winner of the Royal Over-Seas League Singers Prize 2022, first prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards 2018, and first prize and the Audience Prize at the Somerset Song Prize 2019. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Music Opera Studio, where he studied with Alison Wells.

Operatic roles include Guglielmo Cosí fan tutte and Masetto Don Giovanni (Welsh National Opera), Figaro Le nozze di Figaro (Orchestra of the 18th Century), Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro (The Mozartists), Orest Elektra (Tokyo Symphony Orchestra), Belcore L’elisir d’amore (Wild Arts), and Papageno Die Zauberflöte (Hurn Court Opera; Glyndebourne cover). With the RCM Opera Studio, he sang the roles of Ramiro L’heure espagnole, Buonafede Il mondo della luna, Sam Trouble in Tahiti, Le Gendarme Les mamelles de Tirésias and Blazes The Lighthouse.

Concert performances include Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem (Boston Handel and Haydn Society; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra), Walton Belshazzar’s Feast (Tokyo Symphony Orchestra), Haydn The Creation (Montreal Symphony Orchestra), Faure Requiem (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande), Mozart’s Requiem (Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra; Filarmonica Banatul), Bach’s St Matthew Passion (BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra) and St John Passion (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) Handel’s Messiah (Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra) and Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music (London Philharmonic Orchestra).

James has given recitals at Wigmore Hall, the Oxford International Song Festival, Lied Festival Victoria de los Ángeles, Beethovenfest Bonn, Klosters Music, the Hay Festival, the Lammermuir Festival, the London Song Festival, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Glenarm Festival of Voice, the North Norfolk Music Festival and the Ludlow English Song Weekend.