British soprano Louise Alder was born in London and read Music at Edinburgh University where she studied singing with Patricia MacMahon. She graduated with First Class Honours in 2010 and now studies at the Royal College of Music with Dinah Harris as an AHRC full scholar supported by the Midori Nishiura Award and a Norah Popple Award.
Louise was awarded first prize in the Maggie Teyte Competition 2012 at The Royal Opera House and a Miriam Licette Award administered by the Musicians Benevolent Fund. At RCM she has won first prize in both the Ted Moss & Bertha Taylor-Stach Lieder Competition and the Van Someren Godfery English Song Competition and the Cuthbert Smith Prize in the Lies Askonas Competition.
Recently Louise has sung Nurse 2 (The Fairy Queen) with English Touring Opera, and covered Atalanta (Xerxses) with English Touring Opera, Musetta in OperaUpClose’s Olivier Award winning production of La Bohème at the Soho Theatre, Poppea (Agrippina) and Theodora (Theodora) with Barber Opera and Lucia (Rape of Lucretia) with British Youth Opera. Other roles include Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), Vixen Sharp-Ears (The Cunning Little Vixen), Venus (Venus and Adonis) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni).
Solo concert performances include Diane in the world premiere of Debussy’s cantata Diane au Bois with RCM Symphony Orchestra, Les Illuminations/Britten (Budapest String Orchestra, Hungary), Jauchzet Gott/Bach (Moscow Conservatoire, Moscow), Carmina Burana (Philharmonia Chorus), Diana Cacciatrice/Handel (London Handel Festival, St George’s Hanover Square), The Red Cockatoo and Other Songs/Britten (Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Aldeburgh Festival), Creation/Haydn (St. Magnus Festival, Orkney). Louise is a passionate recitalist and has performed in venues such as Royal Albert Hall (Elgar Room), Holywell Music Room Oxford and Perth Concert Halls with pianists Gary Matthewman, John Paul Ekins, Francesca Leonardi and Bernadette Bartos. Louise has recently had the opportunity to sing in masterclasses with Christine Brewer, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, Dame Anne Evans, Ann Murray and Lillian Watson.
Louise enjoys singing contemporary music and performed the world premiere of a work by Scottish composer Andy Thorburn called ‘Moonrise’ for Saxophone quartet and voice, with the highly esteemed saxophone quartet Sax-Ecosse at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. In 2009, she created the role of Female Primatologist in a workshop performance of The Okavango Macbeth by Tom Cunningham and libretto by Alexander McCall Smith and showcased Thomas Seltz’s new opera Awesome X and a cycle of Italian Songs by Kostas Rekleitis in 2010, with the Edinburgh Quartet in St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh.
Future engagements include the 2012 Maggie Teyte Winner’s recital at Crush Room, Royal Opera House, Strauss Brentano Lieder in Perth Concert Halls, Perth, Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro) RCM, Nanetta (Falstaff), Berbiguieres Festival, France.
Louise is generously supported by an Ian Fleming Award and Maidment Scholarship administered by the Musicians Benevolent Fund, a Dewar Arts Award and scholarships from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Hope Scott Trust, Michael Shea Bursary and the University of Edinburgh (Bucher Fraser Scholarship).
© 2012 Louise Alder, all rights reserved.