Artists

New Zealand-born Sāmoan baritone Benson Wilson is the winner of the prestigious 64^th Kathleen Ferrier Award. That same year he was awarded the Most Outstanding Overseas Performer of the Royal Overseas League Competition, the Worshipful Company of Musicians Award, and was the 2018 winner of the Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Foundation Award and the People’s Choice Award.

Recent and forthcoming engagements include company and role debuts as John Shears Paul Bunyan for English National Opera, John Sorel The Consul at Welsh National Opera (cover), Mirza Der Gesang Der Zauberinsel at the Salzburger Festspiele as a 2019 Salzburg Young Singer, and Marullo Rigoletto for Glyndebourne on Tour. On the concert platform he gives recitals for Oxford Lieder, Brighton and Kings Lynn Festivals with pianists Sholto Kynoch and Lucy Colquhoun. Benson is a 2019/2020 National Opera Studio young artist.

Previous operatic roles include Guglielmo Cosi Fan Tutte and Count Almaviva Le Nozze di Figaro (Bloomsbury Opera), Schabernack Le Grand Macabre with London Symphony Orchestra, Schaunard La Boheme (Festival Opera Napier), and Guglielmo Cosi Fan Tutte, Demetrius A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Assan The Consul as a scholar on the Guildhall School of Music & Drama Opera Course.

Benson regularly appears in concert in repertoire including Handel Messiah, Mozart Requiem, Faure Requiem, Duruflé Requiem and Brahms Ein Deutches Requiem, and in 2016 he joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a Total Immersion Concert featuring works by Richard Rodney Bennett.

Prior to relocating to the UK he won New Zealand’s premiere singing competition, the Lexus Song Quest, and graduated with a BMus from the University of Auckland. Benson is a former young artist of the Georg Solti Accademia di Bel Canto, the Samling Young Artist Programme, the International Vocal Arts Institute, and New Zealand Opera School.