Louise Crane
A singing teacher at RBC for nearly twenty years, Louise studied at the Guildhall, gaining her AGSM Diploma and subsequently won awards from Clonter Opera Trust and the Peter Moores Foundation, as well as a college scholarship, to study at the Royal Northern College of Music. After a season with Glyndebourne Festival Opera Louise was awarded the Peter Stuyvestant Foundation Scholarship to the National Opera Studio where she completed her studies.
Some early engagements were Don Giovanni with Opera Factory (filmed for Channel 4), and Dialogues des Carmelites for the Opèra de Lyon (recorded by Virgin Classics), since when her many and varied roles have included Mother Goose (The Rake’s Progress) at the Aldeburgh Festival; Giovanna (Ernani), Ismene (The Siege of Corinth), Death (Le Rossignol) and Smaragdi (Francesca da Rimini) for Chelsea Opera Group; Florence Pike (Albert Herring), Third Lady (The Magic Flute) and Mistress Quickly (Falstaff) for English Touring Opera; Marcellina (The Marriage of Figaro) and Third Lady for both Opera Brava and European Chamber Opera; Flora (La Traviata) for Mid-Wales Opera and the Irish Operatic Repertory Company, Jocasta (Oedipus Rex) and Filipyevna (Eugene Onegin) for Oxford University Opera; The Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas) for Palace Opera, Minerva (Orpheus in the Underworld) and Praskovia (The Merry Widow) for Opera Holland Park. She made her debut with English National Opera in Joanathan Harvey’s Inquest of Love and subsequently took part in the opera’s revival at the Brussels Opera.
In demand for concert engagements at home and abroad, Louise has broadcast Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, appeared on Friday Night is Music Night and toured with the Basque Symphony Orchestra of Spain and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. She has recorded extracts from Handel’s Messiah for Classic FM and performed the same work in Britain and the Far East. She has sung the B Minor Mass in Salisbury Cathedral, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem under Stephen Cleobury at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge and A Child of Our Time at Warwick University. Her repertoire includes the Missa Solemnis, The Dream of Gerontius, Janácek’s Glagolithic Mass, Mahler's Eighth Symphony, Das Lied von der Erde, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater (broadcast for BBC Radio 3), and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. She has sung Berlioz L’Enfance du Christ in Hungary with Howard Williams and the Pécs Hungarian Symphony Orchestra and has sung Carmen and Offenbach programmes at the Barbican and Birmingham Symphony Hall.
Louise was a principal mezzo soprano with the D’Oyly Carte Opera singing at London’s Savoy Theatre, and on tour throughout the UK and the USA. She has sung over fourteen roles with Opera della Luna and is a member of Impropera.
A qualified life coach, Louise specialises in helping musicians with performance anxiety. She gives masterclasses and choral workshops and also teaches vocal and presentational skills in the corporate world. She is an outside examiner at Trinity Laban and the RNCM.