Biography

British baritone Hugo Herman-Wilson read Theology at King’s College, Cambridge before studying at the Royal College of Music. He won the Audience Prize in the 2017 Somerset Song Prize, commended in the Brooks van der Pump English Song Competition in 2018, finalist in the Lies Askonas Competition in 2017, and received the Maidment Award from Help Musicians UK in 2016 and 2018. Hugo was an Alvarez Young Artist with Garsington Opera in 2019, covering the role of Micha in Smetena’s The Bartered Bride, and a Britten-Pears Young Artist for 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Hugo has a growing reputation in contemporary music, recently performing Birtwistle’s Three Songs from the Holy Forest and Theo Chandler’s The Divining Lair at Snape Maltings with conductor Jessica Cottis. He has also collaborated on and premiered in a number of other projects, including, Last Thursday an opera by Gareth Mattey and Lewis Coenen-Rowe as part of the Collisions Festival 2018; threads, a chamber opera combining music by Stephane Crayton, dance, theatre and Monteverdi; Free // Falling, an electroacoustic piece for solo voice by Matthew Lomax; and We the People, a satirical piece for voice and piano by Stella Fiorenzoli with libretto by Donald Trump. Other contemporary repertoire includes Elliot Carter’s Poems of Louis Zukofsky for voice and clarinet and extracts from the roles of Pig in Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop and The Protector in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin.

As part of the Royal College of Music International Opera Studio, Hugo performed the roles of Blazes/Second Officer in Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse, Peter Quince in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Polifemo in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, in a recidency at Snape Maltings

Other recent highlights include the roles of ‘Marcus’ and Scarpia in a daring double-bill of La Bohème and Tosca staged in contemporary one-hour adaptations with Opera Undone at Trafalgar Studios, the role of Mr Jedermann in British Youth Opera’s production of Scoring a Century written by the composer David Blake and the director Keath Warner and a recital of songs and duets by Purcell and Lawes with soprano Charlotte Bowden for the Aldeburgh Festival.

Hugo is grateful to be supported by the Aldama scholarship, the Josephine Baker Trust and the Help Musicians UK Maidment Award.

Hugo will be joining the chorus of Glyndebourne Festival Opera for their 2021 season.