Shakespeare at Home

He made his professional debut singing Masetto (Don Giovanni) for Welsh National Opera, returning in 2024 for Guglielmo (Cosi Fan Tutte). Other roles include Orest (Elektra), Belcore (L’Elisir d’Amore), Steuermann (Tristan und Isolde) and Count Almaviva (Le Nozze di Figaro). The 2025/26 season includes his role debut as Figaro with the Orchestra of the 18th Century.

Concert experience includes Belshazzar’s Feast with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Haydn’s Creation with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Schubert orchestrated songs with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, Brahms’ Requiem with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Fauré’s Requiem with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Handel’s Messiah with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Bach’s St John Passion with Polyphony, and St Matthew Passion with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. A distinguished recitalist, his appearances include the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Klosters Festival, Oxford, Wigmore Hall and his BBC Proms debut at Belfast’s Ulster Hall.

She is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Music, and is a Young Artist of the National Opera Studio, London under the tutelage of Ben Johnson. She was a Verbier Festival Atelier Lyrique Artist.

Roles include Filipyevna (Eugene Onegin), Dido and Second Witch (Dido and Aeneas), Old Lady (Candide), Zweite and Dreite Dame (Die Zauberflöte), La Regina (La Bella Dormente nel Bosco), and Marie (Airtime).  She has performed solos in Handel’s Messiah, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem, and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.  Competition success includes 1st and Audience Prize in the Somerset Song Prize, 1st prize in the AESS’s Patricia Routledge Senior Song Prize, and the Sarah Harrison Prize in HCO’s Singer of the Year competition. She was awarded the Laurus Florentiae in Florence, and the award for the Best Italian Aria.

Recent operatic highlights include Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) for the Royal Swedish Opera and Garsington Opera and Camila (The Exterminating Angel) at the Opéra de Paris.  Her 25-26 season sees her English National Opera début; Tirinto (Imeneo) with Cambridge Handel Opera; and Yolanda in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Railway Children for Glyndebourne.

Bethany has performed with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music and Dunedin Consort and made her BBC Proms debut with the Monteverdi Choir under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Other engagements include the Royal Northern Sinfonia, English Chamber Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra, Dublin. She has appeared at the Lewes Song,  Oxford International Song and Ludlow English Song Festivals. She studied at the University of Leeds and Trinity Laban Conservatoire and is a former Samling Artist and Rising Star of the Enlightenment.

Before studying at the RCM, he studied medicine at Imperial College London and worked as a junior doctor at Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital from 2020 until 2022.

He has been a Young Artist at the Ludlow English Song Weekend and at the Southrepps Music Festival and has taken part in masterclasses with Edith Wiens, Rachel Nicholls, Nicky Spence, Iain Burnside and Malcolm Martineau. He is also generously supported by the Josephine Baker Trust.

Opera roles include Miguel in Offenbach’s Pepito, Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Torquemada in Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole. He performed in the Grange Park Opera chorus for their 2024 season. Recent solo oratorio performances include Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, Verdi’s Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Howard Blake’s Benedictus and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

Recent engagements include Isolde (Tristan und Isolde) for the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Rome, Turin, Karlsruhe, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and Grange Park Opera as well as in concert with the São Paolo Symphony Orchestra,  the title role in Elektra for Basel, Münster and Karlsruhe, the title role in Salome for Hannover,  Brünnhilde (Siegfried) in concert with the Hallé (recently released on CD), Brünnhilde (Götterdämmerung) in Taiwan, Marie/Marietta in Die tote Stadt for the Korean National Opera, Brünnhilde (Die Walküre) for ENO,  Fidelio for Opera North and Lithuanian National Opera, Senta (Der fliegende Holländer) and Mariya (Mazeppa) for Grange Park Opera. She will commence a complete Ring cycle for Grange Park Opera in 2026.

She has worked with orchestras throughout Europe and the Far East and in recital at venues including Wigmore Hall. Recordings include Siegfried and Elgar’s The Spirit of England with the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, a wide repertoire with Bach Collegium Japan, Tippett’s Third Symphony for Chandos and Midsummer Marriage on the LPO’s own label, conducted by Edward Gardner.

Matthew’s international career has seen him enjoy a close relationship with The Metropolitan Opera, for whom he gave his 100th performance in 2022. His roles there include Filippo II and Monk (Don Carlos), Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Claudio (Agrippina), Masetto and Leporello (Don Giovanni), Oroveso (Norma), Ashby (La Fanciulla del West), Talbot (Maria Stuarda), Bottom (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Night Watchman (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Frère Laurent (Roméo et Juliette) and Colline (La bohème).

The 2025/26 season includes Matthew’s return to Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, as Sarastro in The Metropolitan Opera’s beloved Holiday Presentation, and as the Speaker of the House for the Royal Ballet and Opera in London. Matthew also performs in Seattle Opera’s concert performances of Daphne as Peneios and with Sir Mark Elder in L’enfance du Christ at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. In the summer of 2026, he returns to Grange Park Opera for the roles of Fasolt Das Rheingold and Philip II Don Carlo.

Passionate about music and vocal education, Matthew runs Folkestone on Song, an organisation that brings song and singing to Folkestone and East Kent via an international song festival, a bursary award for emerging artists, and a singing academy. He is also the co-director of the Spoleto Vocal Arts Workshop, in association with Mahler & LeWitt Studios and Vocal Masterclass Stockholm.

He performs the Matthäus-Passion with the Concertgebouworkest, tours the UK with Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with Sinfonia of London, and makes his US concert debut with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He also joins regular collaborators Ensemble Pygmalion for the Matthäus-Passion at the Adelaide Festival; tours Handel’s Theodora with Jupiter Ensemble; and appears in recital with pianist Ella O’Neill in Madrid and Paris. Awakenings, his debut album with O’Neill, was released in 2024.

Other highlights include appearances at the Opéra national de Paris, Opéra national du Rhin, Opéra Comique, the Aix-en-Provence and Innsbruck Early Music Festivals; and with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. 

Laurence won First Prize at the Wigmore Hall / Bollinger International Song Competition in 2022.

Having followed his initial interest in baroque music through the young artist programmes of Les Arts Florissants and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment he immediately became in demand as a soloist for conductors including William Christie, Rene Jacobs, Harry Bicket and Trevor Pinnock.

This coming season’s highlights include returning to Glyndebourne for Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Bertie Baigent, Hans Zender’s arrangement of Schubert’s Winterreise with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and Laurence Cummings, St John Passion with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and l’Opera Royal de Versailles, a tour of Mozart’s C Minor Mass with the Orchestra of the 18th Century as well as projects with Les Arts Florrissants.

He has performed in recitals with many of the world’s leading singers. Earlier in his career he had the privilege of working with Dame Margaret Price, Victoria de los Angeles, Galina Gorchakova and Susan Chilcott. More recent collaborators include Rosa Feola, Ailish Tynan, Lawrence Brownlee and Roderick Williams. For Wigmore Hall he has curated a number of recital series, featuring both English and Russian repertoire.

He has been Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend since its inception in 2002, committed to exploring this rich, diverse repertoire and to celebrating different generations of vocal talent. His discography of over sixty recordings straddles an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Judith Weir, with a special place reserved for the highways and byways of English Song. CDs of Britten, Finzi, Ireland and Vaughan Williams with Roderick Williams have been critically acclaimed, as have their recordings of the three Schubert cycles. Burnside’s association with Delphian Records spans both a hugely diverse range of British composers and the complete songs of Rachmaninov (“electrifying” Daily Telegraph).

Burnside has a long association with BBC Radio3, both as programme maker and presenter. In demand as teacher and animateur, he works at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, on the Jette Parker Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House and as International Visiting Artist at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. For Guildhall School Burnside has written and devised a number of highly individual theatre pieces, based variously around Schubert, Brahms, Gurney and Britten. Other musical activities feature Burnside as a committed chamber musician, notably as a founder member of Trio Balthasar. He has served on a variety of international competition juries, both for singers and for pianists, among them Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, Busoni Competition in Bolzano, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competition. He is Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera.