Biography
Suffolk born Mezzo Soprano Clare Presland trained at ENO Opera Works & GSMD. Clare received a 2012 Grange Park Opera Scholarship, was a finalist in the Maureen Lehane vocal awards 2011 at the Wigmore Hall & is the winner of the Odette Sansom Memorial prize for English song and is a Britten Pears Young Artist. Currently, she studies with Robert Dean.
Clare made an acclaimed debut with English National Opera as the Palestinian Woman in Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer, Broadcast on BBC Radio 3: “Clare Presland (mesmerising) has an intensity that almost sears the flesh” - The Times. Other operatic roles include: Second Gentleman, Julietta (ENO); Carmen (New Devon Opera); Aunt, Madama Butterfly & Idamante (cover), Idomeneo (Grange Park Opera); Musetta, La Bohème (Opera UpClose - Olivier Award), Rosina, Barber of Seville & Suzuki, Madama Butterfly (Opera UpClose); Dorabella, Cosi fan Tutte (Jackdaws Young Artists); Jenny, Threepenny Opera, (People’s Theatre & Aloha Theatre, Hawaii); Kate Pinkerton & Aunt, Madama Butterfly & Peaseblossom, Midsummer Nights Dream (Longborough Festival Opera); Annina, La Traviata & Second Witch, Dido & Aeneas (Opera Project); Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias directed by Ted Huffman with Malcolm Martineau, Roger Vignoles & Janis Kelly (Aldeburgh).
Recent concert engagements include A Night at the Opera with LSO St Luke’s Community Choir, Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra, a Plymouth Summer Festival Gala Concert with The Ten Tors Orchestra.
With a strong interest in contemporary music, Clare premiered Anne Chmelewsky’s Through the Looking Screen - a one woman, comic opera written with Clare in mind which went to the Edinburgh Festival earlier this year at the Underbelly Theatre. Clare also premiered Harry Blake’s Manga Sister at The Yard, Hackney.
Her current engagements include a return to English National Opera as Margret Wozzeck, the title role in Carmen (Cover), and Flora Bervoix La traviata, Messiah with the Southbank Sinfonia, Mozart Requiem with the Ten Tors Orchestra and Rossini Stabat Mater with the English Symphony Orchestra.
