“the loose-limbed Oskar McCarthy seemed to channel Ron Moody in his peppy, airy account of the travelling quack, Dulcamara… I flat-out loved it"
Opera Magazine on L’elisir d’amore (Waterperry Opera Festiva)

I am a baritone actor-singer performing new music & old music in new ways. My career spans opera, theatre, choral music and experimental music-theatre. I trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Opera School and Cambridge University, where I studied English Literature, French and Portuguese. I was a member of the inaugural cohort on the 2023-24 VOICEBOX programme specialising in contemporary vocal performance, delivered by Juliet Fraser.

Recent role highlights include The Presenter in Tippett’s New Year with Birmingham Opera Company, Ruggiero in Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d’Alcina for Longborough Festival Opera, Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Grange Festival (a ‘standout performance… mercurially nasty’, The Times), Giorgio in The Gondoliers for Scottish Opera, and Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore for Waterperry Opera Festival. I performed Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King with Red Note Ensemble (a ‘tour de force… mesmerising’, The Herald) in 2020 and created the role of Adam in the premiere of Bertie Baigent and Joe Winters’ Paradise Lost at The Shipwright in 2022. I premiered two works - Madeleine Dring’s Cupboard Love and Gareth Mattey and Robert Reid Allan’s Bermondsey, 1983 - at the 2023 Tête à Tête Opera Festival. I appear as Wagner-dæmon in the UK premiere of Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried at Longborough in 2025.

Previous operatic roles include Quince (cover) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Scottish Opera); Leporello Don Giovanni and Don Alfonso Così fan tutte (Waterperry Opera Festival); Kromow The Merry Widow (Opera Bohemia); The Captain Siren Song (Shadwell Opera); Fasolt Das Rheingold (Edinburgh Players Opera Group); Uberto La serva padrona, Guglielmo Così fan tutte, Taddeo L’italiana in Algeri and Pausanias Une éducation manquée (Pop-up Opera); Falke Die Fledermaus and Binnacle/Garibdis Ulla’s Odyssey (OperaUpClose); Leporello Don Giovanni, Angelotti Tosca, Bello La fanciulla del west and Bartley Riders to the Sea (Midsummer Opera);  Papageno Die Zauberflöte (Opera Anywhere); Arsamenes Serse and Edmund Mansfield Park (HGO); Aeneas Dido and Aeneas and Secrecy The Fairy Queen (Barefoot Opera); Un Viellard Hebreu Samson et Delila and Zurga Les pêcheurs de perles (Genesis Chorale); Dottorre/Marchese La traviata, Escamillo Carmen and Orest Elektra (Secret Opera); and Trinity Moses Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (King's Opera). Roles while training include Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro, Le Gendarme Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Spinelloccio Gianni Schicchi, Junius The Rape of Lucretia and Third Trio Member Trouble in Tahiti.

I recently commissioned Laura Bowler to write Lines, Letters and Disinformation, a music-theatre piece for baritone and electronics, which I premiered at Britten Studio, Snape and Cafe OTO. I have narrated Walton’s Façade with Scots Guards Chamber Ensemble, worked with Secret Cinema on their immersive productions of The Shawshank Redemption and Brazil, and performed alongside aerial theatre artists Ockham's Razor as part of the London International Mime Festival. Other theatrical projects include the role of Wilfred Owen in Where Then Shall We Start?, a semi-operatic multimedia theatre piece performed at the Queen's House, Greenwich, and two critically-acclaimed touring actor-musician plays with Re:Sound Music Theatre - After Party (2014-15) and Duet (2016).

I enjoy work with young audiences and am currently performing in Vache Baroque’s A History of Sound, an educational show for children aged 9-11, touring to schools across 2024. I perform regularly in Big Wheel theatre in education company’s French theatre show, Voulez-Vous?! and have narrated Peter Rabbit's Musical Adventure for Waterperry Opera Festival since 2018. Previous projects include Dance Umbrella and The Egg Theatre's 16 Singers, a devised touring music theatre piece for 0-18 month year olds, incorporating dance, puppetry and song, and Spitalfields Music's Catch a Sea Star, part of their award-winning Musical Rumpus series of music theatre pieces for 0-2.5 year olds.

From 2013 to 2015, I trained with and devised cross-genre work as a core company member of ERRATICA. Our first show, Triptych, performed at the Print Room Notting Hill and the Spitalfields Music Festival, received praise from The Observer, The Times and Time Out. Other projects included a staging of David Lang’s the little match girl passion at Shapes in Hackney Wick, and La Celestina, a site-specific video opera for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I regularly collaborate with composers to devise experimental performances in non-traditional spaces. I recently performed a series of improvised ten-minute solo operas with composer/violist Zeo Fawcett, streamed live from a converted shipping container in Glasgow to equivalent sites in Gaza, Mali and Uganda, as part of the RCS‘ Climate Portal tie-in with Cop26. In 2019, composer Rufus Elliot and I created 'the case against...', a pair of durational, improvised installations for voice and electronics running non-stop from 12-6pm on consecutive days, radically reimagining the composer/singer relationship and celebrating live improvisation.

As a choral singer, I dep regularly in churches across London and am part of the Philharmonia Chorus Professional Singer Scheme. From 2013 to 2016 I was a principal member of The Portrait Choir, with whom I recorded the first ever Choral Audio Guide for the National Portrait Gallery. In 2017 I joined the JSB Ensemble, resident ensemble of the Musikfest Stuttgart, under artistic director Hans-Christoph Rademann. I am co-Artistic Director and Producer of Festival Voices, an experimental collaborative vocal ensemble, with whom I have performed at Bold Tendencies, the London Handel Festival, the Southbank Centre, and Latitude and Wilderness festivals.

Oratorio highlights include Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Sinfonieorchester Schöneberg at the Berlin Philharmonie and the Wales Millennium Centre; Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus; Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and Monteverdi’s Vespers with the Huddersfield Choral Society; Handel's Messiah (National Portrait Gallery); Verdi's Requiem (Philharmonia Britannica); Bach's St Matthew Passion, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Angel Orchestra); and multiple collaborations with the Basement Orchestra.

Song work includes Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with London Euphonia Orchestra, and the UK premiere of Othmar Schoeck's Lebendig Begraben (Buried Alive) for the London Month of the Dead. I developed Buried Alive into a semi-staged theatre piece  - "Tinged with cool Gothic morbidity, and with a deft, light and effective theatrical touch" **** (London City Nights) - which toured around the UK. In 2016, I premiered a trio of songs written for me and Rob Keeley by Robin Holloway at Brompton Cemetery, in a concert that also featured a staging of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, directed by movement director Rachel Drazek.

My ongoing interest in broadening my skill set as a performer has led me to attending workshops in clowning (with Spymonkey), fooling (at Jonathan Kay's Nomadic Academy for Fools), and mime (at the International School of Dramatic Corporeal Mime in Paris).