ABOUT

Jenny Stafford is now firmly established as one of the brightest young talents on the UK opera stage.

In March 2018, she made her major house debut, with Dutch National Opera, as Sarah in James MacMillan’s Clemency. Bachtrack.com praised how her ‘soprano soared in Sarah’s ecstatic music with dramatic intensity’.

Jenny Stafford trained at King’s College, London and the Royal Academy of Music, winning the Isabel Jay Operatic Prize and the Dame Eva Turner Award, and at ENO Opera Works and the Georg Solti Accademia di Bel Canto.

In the UK, Jenny Stafford has appeared: with Bampton Classical Opera as Tisbé (Cendrillon) and as Eginia (Gli sposi malcontenti); with the Buxton International Festival as Prima Donna (Viva la diva); at the Cadogan Hall as Vitellia; with English Touring Opera as Despina, Manon Lescaut, Melissa (Amadigi), Musetta, and Soprano Soloist (St John Passion); with Nevil Holt as Musetta; with Opera North as the Piper (The Pied Piper of Hamelin); with Welsh National Opera as Pamina and Papagena; with West Green House Opera as Nedda, Suor Angelica, and Tatyana (Eugene Onegin), and Wild Arts as Fiordiligi.

In season 2023/24, she recorded Elettra for Brunswick Vocal Arts; covered Magda for Opera North, covered and sang Miss Jessel at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and gave critically-acclaimed performances as Manon Lescaut for English Touring Opera and Suor Angelica for West Green House Opera.

Rupert Christiansen wrote in The Daily Telegraph that: ‘Jenny Stafford Shines as Manon Lescaut. It was Jenny Stafford as Manon who really commanded the stage, with impressive ringing top Cs for declarations of undying passion, and interestingly subtle moments when you could feel a dawning, regretful awareness of her own flightiness.’

Upcoming engagements include her debut with English National Opera as Mary Seton (cover Mary Stewart) in Thea Musgrave’s Mary Queen of Scots.