New Zealand-born Samoan baritone Benson Wilson is the winner of the prestigious 64th Kathleen Ferrier Award, the Most Outstanding Overseas Performer of the Royal Overseas League Competition, the Worshipful Company of Musicians Award, and the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Foundation Award and the People’s Choice Award.
In 2020/21 Benson joined English National Opera as a Harewood Artist, and this season has sung Schaunard and Guglielmo/Così fan tutte with the company. He will make his debut for Opera Holland Park in the role of Friedrich Baer/Little Women.
In the UK he has given recitals at the Brighton, Oxford Lieder, Leeds Lieder, Kings Lynn and Ludlow Song festivals, at Wigmore Hall and St Martin in the Fields, with pianists Iain Burnside, Lucy Colquhoun, Ella O’Neill, James Baillieu and Joseph Middleton. He has appeared in concert with the Orchestra of Opera North, and for Auckland Opera Studio, and most recently performed Finzi In Terra Pax with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.
Previous operatic roles include Marullo/ Rigoletto for Glyndebourne on Tour, John Shears/Paul Bunyan (ENO), Count Almaviva/ Le nozze di Figaro (Bloomsbury Opera) and Schabernack/Le Grand Macabre with the London Symphony Orchestra.