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The English baritone actor-singer, Oskar McCarthy, trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Opera School and Cambridge University, where he studied English Literature, French and Portuguese.
Oskar McCarthy's career spans opera, theatre, choral music and experimental music-theatre. He is part of the inaugural cohort on the 2023-2024 VOICEBOX programme, delivered by Juliet Fraser in partnership with Britten Pears Arts; City, London University; Sound Festival and Dartington Music Summer School.
Recent role highlights include Ruggiero in La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d’Alcina for Longborough Festival Opera, Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Grange Festival (a ‘standout performance… mercurially nasty’ , The Times), Giorgio in The Gondoliers for Scottish Opera, and Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore for Waterperry Opera Festival. He performed Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King with Red Note Ensemble (a ‘tour de force… mesmerising’, The Herald) in 2020 and created the role of Adam in the premiere of Bertie Baigent and Joe Winters’ Paradise Lost at The Shipwright in 2022. I premiere two works - Madeleine Dring’s Cupboard Love and Gareth Mattey and Robert Allan Reid’s Bermondsey, 1983 - at Tête à Tête Opera Festival this summer.
Previous operatic roles include Quince (cover) in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Scottish Opera); Leporello in W.A. Mozart's Don Giovanni and Don Alfonso in W.A. Mozart's Così fan tutte (Waterperry Opera Festival); Kromow in The Merry Widow (Opera Bohemia); The Captain in Siren Song (Shadwell Opera); Fasolt in Das Rheingold (Edinburgh Players Opera Group); Uberto in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona, Guglielmo in W.A. Mozart's Così fan tutte, Taddeo in L’italiana in Algeri and Pausanias in Une éducation manquée (Pop-up Opera); Falke in Die Fledermaus and Binnacle/Garibdis in Ulla’s Odyssey (OperaUpClose); Leporello in W.A. Mozart's Don Giovanni, Angelotti in Tosca, Bello in La fanciulla del west and Bartley in Riders to the Sea (Midsummer Opera); Papageno in W.A. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (Opera Anywhere); Arsamenes in George Frideric Handel's Serse and Edmund in Mansfield Park (HGO); Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas and Secrecy in The Fairy Queen (Barefoot Opera); Un Viellard Hebreu in Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson et Delila and Zurga in Georges Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles (Genesis Chorale); Dottorre/Marchese in La traviata, Escamillo in G. Bizet's Carmen and Orest in Elektra (Secret Opera); and Trinity Moses Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (King's Opera). Roles while training include Count Almaviva in W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Le Gendarme in Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Spinelloccio in Gianni Schicchi, Junius in B. Britten's The Rape of Lucretia and Third Trio Member in Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti.
Oratorio highlights include Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Sinfonieorchester Schöneberg at the Berlin Philharmonie and the Wales Millennium Centre; Johannes Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus; W.A. Mozart's Mass in C Minor with the Hallé Orchestra/Huddersfield Choral Society (conductor - Sofi Jeannin); G.F. Handel's Messiah (National Portrait Gallery); Verdi's Requiem (Philharmonia Britannica); J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion (BWV 244),L.v. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Angel Orchestra); and multiple collaborations with the Basement Orchestra.
Song work includes Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with London Euphonia Orchestra, and the UK premiere of Othmar Schoeck's Lebendig Begraben (Buried Alive) for the London Month of the Dead. He developed Buried Alive into a semi-staged theatre piece - "Tinged with cool Gothic morbidity, and with a deft, light and effective theatrical touch" **** (London City Nights) - which toured around the UK. In 2016, he premiered a trio of songs written for me and Rob Keeley by Robin Holloway at Brompton Cemetery, in a concert that also featured a staging of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, directed by movement director Rachel Drazek.
As a choral singer, Oskar McCarthy regularly sings in churches across London and am part of the Philharmonia Chorus Professional Singer Scheme. From 2013 to 2016 he was a principal member of The Portrait Choir, with whom he recorded the first ever Choral Audio Guide for the National Portrait Gallery. In 2017 he joined the JSB Ensemble, resident ensemble of the Musikfest Stuttgart, under artistic director Hans-Christoph Rademann. He is co-director and Executive Producer of Festival Voices, an experimental collaborative vocal ensemble he co-founded in 2017, with whom he has performed at the London Handel Festival, the Southbank Centre, and Latitude and Wilderness festivals.
As an actor-singer, he has narrated William Walton's Façade with Scots Guards Chamber Ensemble, worked with Secret Cinema on their immersive productions of The Shawshank Redemption and Brazil, and performed alongside aerial theatre artists Ockham's Razor as part of the London International Mime Festival. Other theatrical projects include the role of Wilfred Owen in Where Then Shall We Start?, a semi-operatic multimedia theatre piece performed at the Queen's House, Greenwich, and two critically-acclaimed touring actor-musician plays with Re:Sound Music Theatre - After Party (2014-2015) and Duet (2016). He enjoys work with young audiences and is currently performing in Vache Baroque’s A History of Sound, an educational show for children aged 9-11, touring to schools in 2023-2024. He performs regularly in Big Wheel theatre in education company’s French theatre show, Voulez-Vous?! and has narrated Peter Rabbit's Musical Adventure for Waterperry Opera Festival since 2018. Previous projects include Dance Umbrella and The Egg Theatre's 16 Singers, a devised touring music theatre piece for 0-18 month year olds, incorporating dance, puppetry and song, and Spitalfields Music's Catch a Sea Star, part of their award-winning Musical Rumpus series of music theatre pieces for 0-2.5 year olds.
From 2013 to 2015, Oskar McCarthy trained with and devised cross-genre work as a core company member of ERRATICA. Their first show, Triptych, performed at the Print Room Notting Hill and the Spitalfields Music Festival, received praise from The Observer, The Times and Time Out. Other projects included a staging of David Lang’s the little match girl passion at Shapes in Hackney Wick, and La Celestina, a site-specific video opera for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I regularly collaborate with composers to devise experimental performances in non-traditional spaces. He recently performed a series of improvised ten-minute solo operas with composer/violist Zeo Fawcett, streamed live from a converted shipping container in Glasgow to equivalent sites in Gaza, Mali and Uganda, as part of the RCS‘ Climate Portal tie-in with Cop26. In 2019, he and composerRufus Elliot created 'the case against...', a pair of durational, improvised installations for voice and electronics running non-stop from 12-6pm on consecutive days, radically reimagining the composer/singer relationship and celebrating live improvisation.
Oskar McCarthy's ongoing interest in broadening his skill set as a performer has led him to attending workshops in clowning (with Spymonkey), fooling (at Jonathan Kay's Nomadic Academy for Fools), and mime (at the International School of Dramatic Corporeal Mime in Paris |
