Helen Alison Lawson

Helen Lawson was born in Northumberland and studied singing at the Royal College of Music and the National Opera Studio in London. On completion of her undergraduate studies she awarded several scholarships, including a Sir James Caird Travelling Scholarship, which enabled her to pursue further singing studies in Germany with Prof. Erik Werba at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, and Prof. Konrad Richter at the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart.

Helen has appeared as soloist in opera houses both at home and abroad, including English National Opera; City of Birmingham Touring Opera; English Touring Opera; De Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen and Landestheater Thüringen. Among the roles she has performed are: Butterfly(Puccini: Madama Butterfly), Countess Almaviva (Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro), Pamina (Mozart: Die Zauberfloete); Governess (Britten: Turn of the Screw); Tatiana(Tchaikovsky: Eugen Onegin), Echo (Richard Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos) Solo Blumenmädchen (Wagner: Parsifal) and Senta (Wagner: The Flying Dutchman).

She has also appeared as soloist in concerts and oratorio, including performances of Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ and Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ at the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Sir David Willcocks, as well as in song recitals in the UK and abroad.

Helen trained as a breathing pedagogue in Germany (Osenberg/Parow) and for several years attended Richard Miller’s Institute of Vocal Performance Pedagogy at Oberlin College, USA. She is a certified CoreSinging teacher (Meribeth Dayme) and in 2011 was awarded a Walter Hines Page Scholarship by the English Speaking Union, which enabled her to visit several institutions in the States as part of a research project looking at the American approach to vocal training.

Having taught for 10 years in German universities (Bayreuth and Bamberg), she moved to Glasgow in 2002 to take up the post of Lecturer in Vocal Studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Helen runs German Repertoire, Audition- and Lied-classes, a breathing course and individual vocal tuition and coaching at both post-graduate and under-graduate levels. She is the Course Leader of the RCS Classical Singing Summer School.