Mezzo-Soprano Clare Presland was born in Bury St Edmunds. Her singing teacher spotted her remarkable voice while she was still at school and she went on to the Guildhall School of Music.
Clare was a finalist in the Maureen Lehane vocal awards 2011 at the Wigmore Hall, winning the Odette Sansom Memorial prize for English song. In 2012 she was awarded the Grange Park Opera Scholarship and in 2014 The Royal Philharmonic Society’s Chilcott Award. Clare is also a Britten Pears Young Artist.
She decided to make her career in opera after attending a performance of La Bohème at the English National Opera. Clare joined the ENO training scheme Opera Works and made her professional debut in 2012 as Palestinian Woman in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer. Clare has returned regularly to ENO in roles including Sonetka (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), Mercédès (Carmen), Realtor (Between Worlds), Flora Bervoix (La Traviata) and Margaret (Wozzeck).
She has sung the part of Aksin’ya (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) for Opéra de Lyon and Carmen (title role) and Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw) for Nevill Holt Opera. Clare has a strong interest in contemporary music and premiered Anne Chmelewsky’s The Looking Screen, a one-woman comic opera at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Clare also sings in concert performances internationally, including a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Al Bustan Festival.