Claire Booth

“An actor-singer who can raise the dramatic heat as soon as she enters the stage” (Opera Now), “that most questing, resourceful and intelligent of sopranos” (Daily Telegraph), British soprano Claire Booth has been widely acclaimed for her “radiant, rapturous, wonderfully nuanced performances” and voice of “piercing purity [and] luscious richness” (The Scotsman). She is renowned for her breadth of repertoire, and for the vitality and musicianship that she brings to the operatic stage and concert platform, with a versatility that encompasses repertoire spanning from Monteverdi and Handel, through Rossini, Berg and Britten, to a fearless commitment to the music of the present day.

Highlights of the 2024/25 season include the premiere of Helen Grime’s “Folk” with BBC Scottish Symphony, Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Boston Philharmonic and appearances at Wigmore Hall in a solo recital ‘Cabaret!’ with Jâms Coleman and concerts celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Nash Ensemble. She releases two new recordings commemorating Schoenberg's 150th anniversary: a survey of his lesser-known song repertoire ‘Expressionist Music’ on Orchid Classics, and ‘Portraits of Pierrot’, featuring the complete Pierrot Lunaire and works inspired by the Pierrot character from composers including Korngold, Amy Beach and Thea Musgrave, with Ensemble360 on Onyx Classics, and performs the composer’s songs at the Oxford Lieder Festival, the Glasshouse in Gateshead in collaboration with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

Recent highlights include the creation of a jazz-influenced reworking of Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben with pianists Alisdair Hogarth and Jason Rebello (a Britten Pears Residency project), the world premiere of Emily Howard’s Elliptics with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and London Handel Festival’s staging of Handel cantatas at London’s Stone Nest, with critics reaching for superlatives to capture her dramatic and vocal commitment: “Her mesmerising delivery of Agrippina condotta a morire was in a class of its own […] Booth handled both text and music with powerful variety, spitting out virtuosic ornamentation, her voice terrifyingly expressive […] but her bravery and vulnerability, when all is stripped away, flayed us all.” (The Guardian). She gained notable critical acclaim as “the stunning voice of operatic isolation” for a series of “viscerally powerful” (The Times) performances of La Voix Humaine; following a streamed performance for Grange Park Opera and a video performance specially recorded under lockdown conditions for Welsh National Opera, which earned her Best Actress at the Welsh Theatre Awards, she brought Poulenc’s solo tour-de-force in a triumphant return to London’s Wigmore Hall, with Opera Today praising her “thorough assimilation of both text and music and the intelligence of her delivery. Her intonation is flawless, and her diction perfectly clear […] it is the very unvarnished quality, an honesty of expression, that is perhaps her greatest asset. Such is her portrayal that one watched mesmerised by something excruciatingly real…”

While still a student at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Booth came to international attention performing the world premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Io Passion at the Bregenz and Aldeburgh Festivals, and creating the role of Pakriti in Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream in Pierre Audi’s production for the Netherlands Opera. Subsequent roles have included Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Elcia in Mose in Egitto for Welsh National Opera, Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen for Garsington Opera, Romilda in Handel’s Serse for the Early Opera Company, Dorinda in Handel’s Orlando and Ellida in Craig Armstrong’s The Lady from the Sea for Scottish Opera, Nora in Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea for English National Opera, Adele (Le Comte Ory) for Chelsea Opera Group, Despina for Opera Nantes-Angers, Irene in Vivaldi’s Bajazet for Irish National Opera, the title role in Handel’s Berenice and solo performances of Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments and Georg Friedrich Haas’ Atthis at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the world premiere of Alex Woolf’s A Feast in the Time of Plague for Grange Park Opera, Anne Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Miranda in Thomas Ades’ The Tempest with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Nitocris in Handel’s Belshazzar for the Grange Festival, and Mrs Foran in Turnage's The Silver Tassie with the BBC Symphony. 

Booth’s wide-ranging concert appearances have included Berg’s Seven Early Songs with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and Sinfonica de Galicia, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Vivier’s Lonely Child with Ilan Volkov and the London Sinfonietta, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the City of Birmingham Symphony at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, George Benjamin’s A Mind of Winter with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Britten’s Les Illuminations with the BBC Scottish Symphony. Booth's two decades of collaboration with the late Oliver Knussen included her world premieres of his Requiem: Songs for Sue with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and O Hototogisu! with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and performances of Max in Where the Wild Things Are and Rhoda in Higglety, Pigglety, Pop! which toured from the Aldeburgh Festival via the Swedish Radio Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel to the Barbican’s own 60th birthday celebrations for the composer. She has given over 70 world premieres of compositions by composers as diverse as Elliott Carter, Tansy Davies, Ryan Wigglesworth, Mark-Antony Turnage, Charlotte Bray and Unsuk Chin, and built close associations with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Proms, the London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Aldeburgh and Holland Festivals, as well as working with prestigious ensembles worldwide including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the London and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestras and with conductors including Edward Gardner, Carlo Rizzi, Simone Young, Marcus Stenz, Yannick Nezet-Seguin and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. 

Booth’s diverse discography includes the songs of Mussorgsky, Grieg and Percy Grainger with Christopher Glynn for Avie Records, Wigglesworth's Augenlieder with the Hallé, Lucia in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia for Decca, melodies of Debussy and Faure with Andrew Matthew’s Owen, John Eccles’ The Judgement of Paris with Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company and works by Webern, Knussen, Alexander Goehr, Jonathan Dove and Augusta Read Thomas. Booth also enjoys a burgeoning career as a radio presenter and regular contributor to BBC Radio 3’s Inside Music and Record Review programmes, and as course director for Britten Pears Arts’ Composition and Performance Residencies.

Updated September 2025