PRIZEWINNERS' RECITALS
27th & 28th September 2025
27 SEP, 5:00 PM
PRIZEWINNERS' RECITAL
St Paul’s Church, Winchester
Tickets: £20
28 SEP, 4:00 PM
PRIZEWINNERS' RECITAL
Church House, Wimborne
Tickets: £20
Details
Join us for an unforgettable evening of music as Lily Mo Browne (Mezzo-soprano) and Stephen Whitford (Baritone), both prize-winners at Hurn Court Opera’s annual Singer of the Year Competition 2024, take the stage for a celebratory recital.
These rising stars captivated the judges with their artistry, technique, and passion; resulting in Stephen Whitford winning both the Roger Higgins Second Prize as well as the Wendy Blamire Award, whilst Lily Mo was the recipient of the Sarah Harrison Prize. And now, you’ll have the rare chance to hear them perform in an intimate setting.
🎶 Featuring:
Lily Mo Browne (Mezzo-soprano)
Stephen Whitford (Baritone
🎟️ Tickets: £20
Don’t miss this inspiring evening of music at its most vibrant and promising.
Performers
Stephen Whitford
Stephen Whitford is a British baritone, originally from Gloucestershire and now based in London. His professional engagements range from full-scale operas to intimate recitals with a repertoire encompassing music both very new and very old, as well as some things in between.
Stephen is an Opera Prelude Young Artist and has appeared as a soloist in concerts and operas in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, China, the US, Canada and the UK. He has won prizes in the Hurn Court Competition, Patricia Routledge Prize and Courtney Kenny Award and was a finalist or semi-finalist in the Wigmore Song Competition, John Kerr Award and Charles Wood Prize. Recent engagements include: Marcello in La Bohème (Aylesbury Opera), covering Don Giovanni (Hurn Court), recitals in the Aldeburgh Festivals of 2023 and 2024, Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Stroud Choral Society), Chorus for La Bohème (Longborough Festival Opera), Derrick in Planquette’s Rip van Winkle (Gothic Opera) and Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem (Dean Close Choral Society). In 2022, he created the role of Kerel in a new opera by Daniel Linton-France in Schönbrunner Schloßtheater with the Beethoven Philharmonie.
He is an alumnus of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme and he has studied at King’s College, Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music, London and the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. He is continuing my studies with Sophie Grimmer.
In April 2025, Stephen performed the role of Dandini in La Cenerentola.
Find out more on Stephen's website:
Lily Mo Browne
Winner of the 70th Kathleen Ferrier award, Lily Mo Browne is a 24-year-old mezzo-soprano from East London currently in her final year of study on the Vocal and Opera Masters Programme at the Royal College of Music. She studies under Ben Johnson and Caroline Dowdle, is generously supported by the Drake Calleja Trust, and is both a Robert Lancaster and Helen Majorie Tonks Scholar. She is excited to join the Verbier Festival’s Atelier Lyrique Academie as a 2025 Young Artist. Lily placed third in the Junior Kathleen Ferrier competition in 2019, and was a recipient of the Pamela Hart award. She has taken part in masterclasses with Roderick Williams OBE and Dame Sarah Connolly. With a passion for song and spoken text, Lily has performed in numerous song concerts, including the RCM’s SongPlus concerts with Audrey Hyland, selections of Brahms' Liebeslieder Walzer and other songs at the Luton Music Club with Simon Lepper, and most recently Benjamin Britten’s Cabaret Songs with Ella O’Neill. Lily regularly takes to the stage as both performer and ‘Master of Ceremonies’ in Clarity’s Classical Meets Cabaret concerts.
Lily competed in and won the Somerset Song Prize, where she also received the Audience Prize. She also received first prize in the AESS’s Patricia Routledge Senior Song Prize, and the Sarah Harrison Prize in this year’s Hurn Court Opera Singer of the Year competition, 2nd in the RCM’s Brook van der Pump English Song Final, 3rd in the RCM’s Joan Chissell Schumann Competition Final. She joined the London Song Festival for a prize winners’ concert in November 2024, and will return to Devon to perform a solo prize-winner recital in September 2025.
Lily was a Southrepps Music Festival Young Artist in 2022 and a 2023 Emerging Artist at Nevill Holt Opera in Leicester. Operatic roles include Second Witch (Dido and Aeneas-Hurn Court Opera) and Old Lady (Candide-Southgate Youth Opera). She has performed with the Royal College of Music International Opera Studio in both productions of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte as Zweite Dame and later, as cover Dreite Dame, chorus in Orpheus in the Underworld and most recently, La Regina in Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco. Opera scenes include Maurya(Riders to the Sea), Mère Marie (Dialogues des Carmélites), Bradamante (Alcina), and Mistress Quickly (Falstaff) and Povova (The Bear). Lily recently debuted the role of Marie in Ed Driver’s new opera Airtime, in collaboration with the RCM International Opera Studio and Tete-A-Tete opera. She performed with the Grange Festival in a concert performance of David Matthews’ opera Anna. Lily has been the alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, and Mozart’s Requiem. She joined Martyn Brabbins and the RCM Symphony Orchestra and Chorus as the alto soloist in Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, and Hounslow Symphony Orchestra for Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in 2025.
Repertoire
Coming soon.