Sir Thomas Allen (reader), Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano) and Joseph Middleton (piano).

Saturday 11 January 2025, 7.30pm

"This Other Eden", a programme of English song and verse.

About

Sir Thomas Allen is an established star of the great opera houses of the world. He has sung over fifty roles at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; this year he celebrates the 50th anniversary of his debut with the Company. An acclaimed recitalist, he is equally renowned on the concert platform and has appeared with the world’s great orchestras and conductors. His many honours include the title of Bayerischer Kammersänger awarded by the Bayerische Staatsoper. In the New Year’s Honours of 1989 he was created a Commander of the British Empire and in the 1999 Queen’s Birthday Honours he was made a Knight Bachelor.

Kitty Whately is one of the UK’s most characterful mezzo sopranos of the operatic stage and concert platform, and a highly acclaimed interpreter particularly of contemporary opera and art song. She has performed leading roles in world and UK premieres of opera by Mark Anthony Turnage, Missy Mazzoli, Mark Adamo and Vasco Mandonça, alongside song cycles written especially for her by Jonathan Dove, Sally Beamish, Steven Hough, Juliana Hall and Tarik O’Regan. She has received critical acclaim for performances of opera by Benjamin Britten and Bernard Hermann, as well as a huge variety of roles from the core canon of classical opera.

Joseph Middleton specialises in the art of song and was the first accompanist to win the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award. He is Director of Leeds Lieder, Musician in Residence at Pembroke College, Cambridge and Fellow and Professor of his alma mater, the Royal Academy of Music.

Alongside the world’s finest singers, Joseph appears at major music centres including Wigmore Hall, New York’s Lincoln Centre, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Vienna, Kölner Philharmonie, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Musée d’Orsay, Oji Hall Tokyo and Festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, BBC Proms, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Schubertiade Hohenems and Schwarzenberg, Seoul, and Vancouver. He frequently curates his own series for BBC Radio and his critically acclaimed and fast-growing discography have won the Diapason D’or, Edison Award and Priz Caecilia.