Just heard from 2009 Tait Awardee, Nicholas Lester. I remember meeting him in 2006 when he was singing small roles with Opera UK. He has worked several times for Opera Holland Park since and has obviously been doing very well.
Recent roles include Edward Lear in Ode to nonsense for State Opera of South Australia and Slingsby Theatre; Songs of a Wayfarer, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen – part of the Rudolph Nureyev Gala for English National Ballet. Upcoming roles include Don Giovanni (cover), Dr Malatesta in Don Pasquale and Ping in Turandot for Scottish Opera
Biography
Nicholas Lester, now a UK citizen resident in London, studied at the Adelaide Conservatorium of Music and at the National Opera Studio, London where his studies were sponsored by Glyndebourne Festival Opera as the recipient of the Anne Woods/Johanna Peters Award. He was also a recipient of an Independent Opera/National Opera Studio Postgraduate Voice Fellowship and an award from the Tait Memorial Trust. While at the National Opera Studio he appeared in concert with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra and covered Belcore L’elisir d’amore at Welsh National Opera.
Early in his career Nicholas Lester’s operatic engagements included The Foreman Jenufa for Glyndebourne On Tour, Count Almaviva The Marriage of Figaro and Theseus A Midsummer Night’s Dream for English Touring Opera, Doctor and Shepherd Pelléas et Méllisande at Opera Holland Park, Diarte Erismena (Cavalli) with New College Opera, Oxford and Justizrat and coverStorch Intermezzo with Scottish Opera.
Other roles Nicholas Lester has performed are Marcello La bohème, Onegin Eugene Onegin, Pietro Simon Boccanegra, Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro, Don Alfonso Cosi fan tutte, Speaker The Magic Flute, Malatesta Don Pasquale, Second Prisoner Fidelio, Aeneas Dido and Aeneas, Miguel Betrothal in a Monastery (Prokofiev), Colonel Calverly Patience, Pirate King The Pirates of Penzance,and Sir Joseph Porter HMS Pinafore. His repertoire also includes Leporello Don Giovanni, Pasha Selim Abduction from the Seraglio, Paris Roméo et Juliette, Kagler Wiener Blut, Brioche The Merry Widow, Kuligin Katya Kabanova, Fiorello Il barbiere di Siviglia and The Vicar Albert Herring.
Nicholas Lester has a busy concert diary. Recent engagements have included performances of Mendelssohn Elijah, Bach Cantatas, Rameau Motets and Mozart Requiem. He has sung Brahms Requiem in Beijing, Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Fauré Requiem at St Martin-in-the- Fields and Handel’s, The Messiah under Laurence Cummings.
Nicholas Lester’s recent engagements include Marcello for the State Opera of South Australia and Onegin Eugene Onegin and Figaro The Barber of Seville for English Touring Opera. Last season he performed Schaunard La Boheme with the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands, a role he repeated with Glyndebourne On Tour last autumn and The Speaker The Magic Flute for Scottish Opera in a new production to be directed by Sir Thomas Allen.