Helen Stanley is a Scottish mezzo soprano, currently based in London. She studied at Trinity College of Music, The Royal Academy of the Music and The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she won several awards including the David & Phillipa Seligman Award for Excellence. 

At RWCMD, Helen’s opera roles included Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro, Mistress Quickly in Falstaff and The Witch in Hansel and Gretel. She appeared as a soloist in opera gala performances for Mid Wales Opera and with the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, singing arias and ensembles from works including Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, The Magic Flute, Lakmé and Il barbiere di Siviglia. She also performed a series of Borodin songs with the Gould Piano Trio and sang Mistress Quickly in Falstaff as part of a gala performance for HRH The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace. Professional credits during her time at college include Juno in Semele for Mid Wales Opera and Popova in The Bear, performed both in Cardiff and at the Walton Estate in Ischia, Italy.

Helen’s other roles have included Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande, Mrs Herring in Albert Herring, Olga in Eugene Onegin, Emma in Alfred, the title roles in Dido and Aeneas and Savitri, and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia for the London Rossini Festival. She has been a frequent collaborator with Pop Up Opera, appearing as Isabella in L’Italiana in Algieri, Dorabella in Così fan tutte and Fidalma in Il matrimonio segreto.

She is particularly interested in 20th and 21st century opera and has been involved in premieres with Grimeborn, Tête à Tête and Helios Collective. Recently she performed Mary in Cabildo, the only opera by American composer Amy Beach, composed in 1932 and staged for the first time in the UK at the 2019 Grimeborn Festival. She reprised the role in a new production at Wilton’s Music Hall in Autumn 2021. Helen was also involved in a research project based at Wilton’s Music Hall as part of their ‘Plays without Décor’ scheme, investigating the possibilities of a new presentation of Die Zauberflöte. In Summer 2023 she toured Borka: The Opera with Ignite Music, performing this family show with puppets and video installation at festivals around the UK and Ireland.

Helen has spent several seasons as a member of the Grange Park Opera chorus, where she also covered roles in Madama Butterfly and Eugene Onegin. She was also a member of the chorus in the recent Grange Park Opera and Sky Arts collaboration Gods of the Game, a football opera featuring Lee Mack.

In addition to her operatic work, Helen is also a busy concert singer: she is a regular soloist at St Martin-in-the-Fields, performing with their choirs and instrumental ensembles, and she has also appeared as a soloist with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Bach B Minor Mass, Handel Messiah and Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music. Other solo concert highlights have included Beethoven Missa Solemnis with the Southbank Sinfonia, Schmitt La Tragédie de Salomé with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Daniel-Lesur Cantique des Cantiques with the BBC Symphony Chorus. 

Recently, Helen has begun to perform further afield in Europe: in Summer 2023 she sang L’Opinion Publique in Orphée aux Enfers with Berlin Opera Academy, and from Autumn she will be singing in the chorus of Das Wunder der Heliane with Dutch Touring Opera. For information about Helen’s other forthcoming projects, please get in touch via the Contact page of this website.