RCM Competition Successes

Monday 2 September 2013

RCM singers Sinéad O'Kelly and Benjamin Williamson have both enjoyed success in recent competitions.

RCM soprano Sinéad O’Kelly has been crowned NI Opera Voice of 2013 by BBC Radio 3’s Sean Rafferty, after a gala final that marked the climax of this year’s Glenarm Festival of Voice. Sinéad, who is studying for her BMus(Hons) at the RCM, was competing against four other talented young opera singers from across Ireland, and impressed the judges and audience with her performance of arias and songs by Donizetti, Bizet, Monteverdi, Fauré and Barber.

Meanwhile, countertenor and RCM alumnus Benjamin Williamson has won the Nei Stëmmen International Singing Competition in Luxembourg. Ben wowed the judges with performances of Es ist vollbracht from Bach’s St John Passion and Venti turbini from Handel’s opera ‘Rinaldo’. Ben graduated from the RCM International Opera School in 2011 where he won the English Song Competition. He was a Retrospect Ensemble Young Artist in 2010, and is a member of the solo-voice ensemble Cries of London which won first prize in the Royal Overseas League Competition in 2011.