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, received the Maidment Award from Help Musicians UK in 2016 and 2018 and was a Britten-Pears Young Artist for 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Recent highlights include the roles of Marcello and Scarpia in a 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 David Blake and Keith Warner, Micha (cover) in The Bartered Bride as a Garsington Opera Alvarez Young Artist and a recital of songs and duets by Purcell and Lawes with soprano Charlotte Bowden for the Aldeburgh Festival. Hugo is a member of the Glyndebourne Chorus for their 2021 season.

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 residency at Snape Maltings.

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.

Hugo is grateful for the support of the Aldama scholarship, the Josephine Baker Trust and the Help Musicians UK Maidment Award.