Lyric soprano Verity Wingate joined the Opera Studio at the Dutch National Opera after her guest appearance as Elisetta in Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto in April 2019. She joined the studio in September and sang the role of Anna in Nabucco alongside Anna Pirozzi as Abigaille. The world premiere of Willem Jeths’ opera Ritratto, in which Verity takes the lead role of Italian socialite Luisa Casati Stampa di Soncino, was scheduled for mid-March 2020 as part of the Opera Forward Festival. The staged performances were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic but a live recording of the dress rehearsal was made available online and received over 75,000 viewings. Six performances of Ritratto are now scheduled in October for the Dutch National Opera 2020/2021 season.

Verity was selected for the Salzburg Festival Young Singers Project 2020. Her participation in this is deferred until 2021 because of the pandemic, but she was able to perform the role of Die Schleppträgerin as scheduled in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of Elektra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst.

Verity’s offer to join the studio of the Dutch National Opera followed her operatic debut as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte for Garsington Opera in the summer of 2018. Engaged to cover the role she stepped in at short notice for an ailing colleague. Verity returned to Garsington in 2019 to take part in performances of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers.

In addition to her opera stage performances, Verity has recently appeared on the concert platform in a recital of Mozart arias and ensembles at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; recitals of works by Schubert and Handel with members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra Academy and a gala recital with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK.

Verity is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and of the Royal Academy of Music in London and is the recipient of several awards and scholarships. In 2018 she received Garsington Opera’s Leonard Ingram Award and while at the Guildhall School she received the Paul Hamburger Prize awarded by Graham Johnson for her excellence in Schubert song. She is a scholar of the Samling Institute, the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation and the Alvarez Young Artist Programme at Garsington Opera.

Following a project at the Guildhall School, Verity was invited to join the prestigious group, The Prince Consort by its founder Alisdair Hogarth and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston. As one of its members she has given recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall and at music festivals in Harrogate, Bath and Hertfordshire, whilst also appearing on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’ and featuring frequently on Classic FM.

As a concert and oratorio soloist Verity has appeared in performances of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and B minor Mass; Handel’s Jephtha, Athalia and Messiah; Mozart’s Requiem and C minor Mass; Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem; and Mahler’s 4th Symphony. Among the venues where she has sung are the Leipzig Gewandhaus, New York’s Lincoln Center and in the UK at the Barbican Centre, Wigmore Hall, St. John’s Smith Square and St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London; the Aldeburgh Festival and the Holywell Music Room in Oxford.

Verity has worked with opera directors including Krzysztof Warlikowski, Andreas Homoki, Monique Wagemakers, Netia Jones and Marcel Sijm, and conductors including Franz Welser-Möst, Maurizio Benini, Gianluca Capuano, Masaaki Suzuki, Laurence Cummings and Christian Curnyn.

Verity will be a member of the Dutch National Opera Studio for a second year from September 2020 where forthcoming planned engagements include her postponed realisation of the role of Luisa Casati in performances of Ritratto, directed by Marcel Sijm with the Residentie Orkest of The Hague and conductor Geoffrey Paterson. She is also scheduled to sing the role of the High Priestess in Aida, conducted by Andrea Battistoni and directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. In the summer of 2021, Verity will return to Salzburg as a member of the Young Singers Project.