John Tomlinson

Sir John Tomlinson was born in Lancashire. He gained a BSc in Civil Engineering at Manchester University before winning a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music. He was awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2005. He was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Singer in 1991, 1998 and 2007 and in 2014 their Gold Medal. He has sung for the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Geneva and Paris, the Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Munich and Glyndebourne festivals and all the leading British companies. He made his Bayreuth Festival debut in 1988 as Wotan (Der Ring des Nibelungen) under Daniel Barenboim and went on to sing there every summer from 1989 to 2006. His repertory has included Boris Godunov, Bluebeard, Baron Ochs (Der Rosenkavalier), Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande), Claggart (Billy Budd), General (The Gambler), Philip II and the Grand Inquisitor (Don Carlo), Méphistophélès (Faust), the four villains (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), the title role of Ivan Susanin, Jacopo Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra), Tommaso Becket (Assassinio nella cattedrale), Boris Ismailov and Moses (Moses und Aron). He also created Green Knight (Gawain) and the Minotaur (The Minotaur) for Harrison Birtwistle. Tomlinson’s wide discography includes CDs of works by Handel, Mozart, Wagner and Stravinsky and DVDs of The Minotaur, Parsifal and Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Rozanna was born in Leicestershire, England, of Ukrainian descent. After completing her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Rozanna decided to dedicate herself to classical singing. She won a place to continue her vocal studies on the postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music with Anne Howells and Jonathan Papp in September 2011, where she was recipient of the Kohn Foundation Award. A year later, she became a member of the internationally acclaimed Royal Academy Opera School and Academy Song Circle, where she was recipient of the Karaviotis Scholarship, the Sir Charles Mackerras Award and the Carr-Gregory Trust Award and was a finalist in the prestigious Royal Academy of Music Patrons Award. Rozanna was also awarded the Karaviotis Prize at Les Azuriales Young Artist Competition, Nice, in August 2012 and, in the summer of 2013, attended the Solti Accademia in Castiglione della Pescaia. In May 2012, Rozanna was awarded a place on the prestigious Young Artist Platform at the Oxford Lieder Festival. Since then, she has been invited to perform in various concert halls around the UK and abroad, including the Holywell Music Room, Kings Place, the Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin, the Prokofiev Hall at the Mariinsky Theatre and the Small Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia. Previous roles include Prinz Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Berlin Opera Academy), Mother Goose in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (cover for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Second Woman/Second Witch in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Birmingham Opera Company), Jezebel in Goehr’s Naboth’s Vineyard (Melos Sinfonia), Beggar Woman in Britten’s Death in Venice (Garsington Opera), Smeraldina in Dove’s The Little Green Swallow (British Youth Opera), the title role in Handel’s Ariodante (Royal Academy Opera), Madame de la Haltière Cendrillon (RAO), Fidalma in Cimarosa’s The Secret Marriage (cover for BYO), the title role in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (RAO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra), Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Sinfonia d’Amici) and Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto (Stanley Opera).