HughCutting

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  • Countertenor

About Hugh

Celebrated for the expressive power of his voice and adventurous musical choices, British countertenor Hugh Cutting is redefining the possibilities of his voice type on both opera and recital stages. A BBC New Generation Artist (2022–24) and the first countertenor to win the Kathleen Ferrier Award, he combines luminous vocal artistry with an instinct for musical storytelling. In the 2025/26 season, he makes house debuts as Arsace (Partenope) at English National Opera, Unulfo (Rodelinda) at Santa Fe Opera, and Tolomeo (Giulio Cesare) at The Grange Festival.

A Wigmore Hall Artist in Residence this season, Hugh curates and performs a wide-ranging recital series and appears with, among others, The English Concert and Harry Bicket, Les Arts Florissants and William Christie, his own ensemble Refound, the Dunedin Consort, and the Irish Baroque Orchestra under Peter Whelan, with whom he also undertakes a solo US recital tour. He debuts with the San Francisco Symphony in Bach’s Easter Oratorio under Bernard Labadie; joins Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo for a European tour of St Matthew Passion, and sings Didymus Theodora on a European tour with Thomas Dunford and Jupiter Ensemble.

Hugh has made a number of notable international opera debuts in recent seasons: Corindo (Orontea, Cesti) at La Scala, Milan; the title role in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice with The Dallas Opera; the Boy in George Benjamin's Written on Skin at Deutsche Oper Berlin; Tolomeo (Giulio Cesare, Handel) with Pinchgut Opera in Sydney; and Monteverdi at Opernhaus Zürich. He has also performed Ariel in the world premiere of Anthony Bolton’s Island of Dreams at Grange Park Opera, and the Boy in Written on Skin in Stavanger (conducted by the composer) and in Rome with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

On the concert platform, Hugh has appeared at Wigmore Hall and made his US concert debut at Carnegie Hall with Bernard Labadie and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Other recent highlights include Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Masaaki Suzuki, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, and the Tonkünstler Orchestra; Messiah with Ivor Bolton; St Matthew Passion with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Jonathan Cohen; Polinesso (Ariodante) with Les Arts Florissants, Dardano (Amadigi) with The English Concert; and solo cantatas with Les Violons du Roy and Bernard Labadie in Quebec City and Montreal.

A passionate champion of new music, Hugh has premiered works by Alex Ho, Piers Connor Kennedy, Elena Langer, Anna Semple, and Tara Viscardi. His debut album REFOUND with pianist Audrey Hyland is released on Linn Records in October 2025.

A former choral scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, Hugh went on to study at the Royal College of Music, where he was a member of the International Opera Studio and was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal, presented by HM King Charles III.

Hugh is based in London

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Contact

Will Pate

Will Pate

Associate Artist Manager
Ivo Ivanov

Ivo Ivanov

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt


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Season Highlights

Nov 2025 - Dec 2025
English National Opera, London
Handel Partenope (Arsace) Christian Curnyn (conductor)
Mar 2026
US Tour
The Trials of Tenducci Peter Whalan (conductor) Irish Baroque Orchestra
Mar 2026 - Apr 2026
EU Tour
Bach St Matthew Passion Tour Johnathan Cohen (conductor) Arcangelo
Apr 2026
Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco
Bach Easter Oratorio Bernard Labadie (conductor) San Francisco Symphony
Jun 2026
The Grange Festival, Alresford
Handel Giulio Cesare (Tolomeo) Christian Curnyn (conductor)
Jul 2026 - Aug 2026
Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe
Handel Rodelinda (Unulfo) Harry Bicket (conductor)

Video

Photos

Selected Repertoire

Benjamin

Written on Skin (Boy)

Bolton

Island of Dreams (Ariel)

Cesti

Orontea (Corindo)

Dove

Flight (Refugee)

Handel

Agrippina (Nerone)   •   Amadigi di Gaula (Dardano)   •   Ariodante (Polinesso)   •   Berenice (Arsace)   •   Giulio Cesare (Tolomeo)   •   Partenope (Arsace)   •   Rodelinda (Bertarido, Unulfo)

News

Press

  • Handel | Rodelinda (Unulfo)

    Garsington Opera
    May 2025 - Jul 2025

    • Hugh Cutting complements… well as Unulfo, with his warmer, more yearning countertenor, his well sustained lines as dependable as his loyalty to the deposed king.

    • Hugh Cutting’s excellent Unulfo…gave us a feast of fine English countertenor singing.

    • Both countertenors are sublime…Hugh Cutting’s rapidfire coloratura is flawless as the chain-smoking Unulfo.

    • Countertenor Hugh Cutting as Bertarido’s louche, chain-smoking friend Unolfo was by far the most interesting person dramatically. He came over as a Handelian Puck – entertainingly amoral and mischievous.

    • Cutting sang with great beauty of tone, investing his simile arias in a real depth of meaning. Yet his performance had puckish quality too in the way that his Unulfo has agency, it is he that orchestrates things in the background.

  • Handel | Giulio Cesare (Tolomeo)

    Pinchgut Opera, Sydney
    Nov 2024 - Nov 2024

    • Hugh Cutting is most fascinating as Tolomeo – an immature and psychopathic character, who is unrelenting in his pursuit of power. Cutting’s voice and body merge in a performance that delivers nuanced details of Tolomeo’s conniving and cruel nature. He creates in the moment, making the organic rendition of his character exciting to watch. In Act 3, Scene 2, with countertenor brilliance and acting dexterity Cutting powerfully conveys Tolomeo's rage as he orders the imprisonment and potential execution of Cleopatra

    • Hugh Cutting sang Tolomeo, playing the spoiled, cruel brat to the hilt... he produced good unforced tone, with some excellent snarls and drops into chest for dramatic effect

    • Fellow English countertenor Hugh Cutting is a formidable force as Tolomeo, who plots for singular control of the throne while manipulating the wife of Caesar’s decapitated Roman rival Pompeo. The dexterity of and intentions conveyed by Cutting’s vocal interpretations are outstanding and his character’s manipulative and dangerously unpredictable nature might have you making modern day comparisons

    • As the evil villain Tolomeo countertenor Hugh Cutting was nastiness itself and for those of us who love a perfect villain he was surely it. He brought an edge of wickedness into his singing whilst always singing with sustained beauty.

  • 'The South Country' - Brighton Festival

    Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
    May 2024

    • We expected good – very good – and got more than excellent! This year, ... they presented a winning collection of Sussex songs and poems. Some were whimsical, others passionate, all delivered with beguiling musicality and acted with great charm.

  • Hugh Cutting Recital Debut

    Wigmore Hall
    May 2024

    • The fast-rising countertenor Hugh Cutting undoubtedly has an exceptional voice: lustrous and rounded, with power in reserve and immaculate intonation. But also, and perhaps even more valuable, he clearly thinks imaginatively about what he can offer a world where there’s no shortage of aspiring young men singing in the treble clef. For this, his Wigmore Hall solo debut, he managed to confound expectations in two directions.

  • Handel | Deborah (Barak)

    Hannover, Göttingen - Germany
    Apr 2024

    • Weltklasse-Countertenor Hugh Cutting singt mitreißend und mit sichtbarer Freude als Barak, dem Anführer der Israeliten. World-class countertenor Hugh Cutting sings rousingly and with visible joy as Barak, the leader of the Israelites.

      • Udo Hinz, Göttinger Tageblatt
      • 15 April 2024

  • St Matthew Passion | Irish Baroque Orchestra

    St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
    Mar 2024

    • Cutting’s colourings ran the gamut, including a clarion lower register – but I’d go so far as to say that this is the most dramatically expressive countertenor singing I’ve ever heard.

  • Bach B Minor Mass | Rundfunk-Sinphonieorchester Berlin

    Konzerthaus Berlin
    Jan 2024

    • Besondere Würdigung verdient der herausragende Altus Hugh Cutting, derzeit BBC New Generation Artist. In seinen beiden Arien „Qui sedes“ und dem „Agnus Dei“ glänzte der junge Brite mit packender Präsenz und schien jeden einzelnen Konzertbesucher im Saal direkt ansprechen zu wollen. The outstanding alto Hugh Cutting, currently a BBC New Generation Artist, deserves special praise. In his two arias "Qui sedes" and the "Agnus Dei", the young Brit shone with a gripping presence and seemed to want to speak directly to every single concertgoer in the hall.

  • Bach Christmas Oratorio | Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

    Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
    Dec 2023

    • Hugh, warm of tone (this is a really lovely voice), did wonderful things with Schlafe, Mein Liebster and Schliesse, Mein Herz, die Seliger Wunder.

  • Ariodante (Polinesso)

    Philharmonie de Paris
    Oct 2023 - Oct 2023

    • La subtilité du phrasé ainsi que sa puissance constante en font l’un des meilleurs solistes de la soirée. The subtlety of the phrasing as well as his constant power make him one of the best soloists of the evening.

  • Partenope (Arsace)

    Jul 2023

    • Même si tous les jeunes chanteurs du « Jardin des voix » des « Arts Flo » sont admirables, Hugh Cutting (Arsace) est un contre-ténor dont on entendra parler très vite. Il a tout : la puissance, la couleur, la virtuosité, l’émotion. Des moments du calibre de son « Ch’io Parta ? » (« Ainsi je pars », dit-il à Rosmira) de l’acte III, nous n’en avons pas eu souvent à Lanaudière depuis Prélude et mort d’Isolde par Alain Altinoglu. Although all the young singers in the Arts Flo's 'Garden of Voices' are admirable, Hugh Cutting (Arsace) is a countertenor we'll be hearing more about very soon. He has it all: power, colour, virtuosity, emotion. We haven't had moments of the calibre of his "Ch'io Parta" ("Thus I go", he says to Rosmira) in Act III at Lanaudière since Alain Altinoglu's Prelude and Death of Isolde.

  • Bach & Handel Arias

    Carnegie Hall, NY
    Jun 2023

    • Cutting roused his OSL audience to a loud and long ovation when he concluded last week’s concert with Arsace’s “Furibondo.” a dazzling coloratura showpiece in which the beleaguered hero compares his confusion to a furious wind. Cutting whizzed through its challenging roulades with apparent ease while also embracing the aria’s ABA’ structure with burning intensity. ...Cutting delighted in scampering from potent highs to brusquely chesty lows. The aria gave notice that he’s bound to be a deliciously villainous Polinesso when he rejoins LAF this fall for Ariodante. ...the concert’s first half was dominated by Cutting’s radiantly impassioned Vergnügte Ruh. Labadie suggested in his brief opening remarks that Bach likely wrote his few solo alto cantatas for an anonymous Leipzig lad whose voice was likely threatening to change at any moment. Cutting’s boyishly rapt reading recaptured the eager, earnest involvement that must have inspired Bach in 1726.

  • Recital Hugh Cutting & Christopher Glynn

    Ryedale Festival
    May 2023

  • Counter-Tenor Duets with Iestyn Davies

    Wigmore Hall
    Sep 2022

    • It was all delightfully performed ... and when Cutting and Davies performed Purcell’s Sound the Trumpet as an encore, in an arrangement that skipped along like a 17th-century jam session, it brought the house down.

  • Partenope (Arsace)

    Festival de Beaune
    Jul 2022

    • L’Arsace bellement virtuose – mais pas seulement – de Hugh Cutting offre une palette de sentiments et de nuances d’une infinie variété, de la furie (« Furibondo ») au désespoir contenu (« Ch’io parta? »)'. Arsace beautifully virtuoso - but not only - Hugh Cutting offers a palette of feelings and nuances of infinite variety, from fury ("Furibondo”) to restrained despair (“ Ch'io parta? ”)

  • Flight (Refugee)

    Royal College of Music
    Jul 2022

    • Cutting’s resonant, freely projected dramatic arioso captured the Puck-like vivaciousness and optimism of the Refugee as he moved between the travellers, begging for small changes, clothes and a bite to eat, spreading spiritual wisdom and words of love and peace among the bickering couples, and even directing the lustful Steward and Stewardess to a hideaway on Level 2 for a seventeen-minute pre-take off assignation. Cutting’s sound bloomed with astonishing relaxation, power and accuracy, sometimes strengthened by a sonic earthiness, sometimes strangely ‘other’.

    • His brilliant adeptness at negotiating emotion, technique, and historics bodes well for his future career aspirations, and his upcoming debut at the Opernhaus Zürich will be something of merit.

  • Recital Hugh Cutting & George Ireland

    Brighton Festival
    May 2022

    • He is an excellent story-teller and he brought Monteverdi’s Ottone, the husband cuckolded by Nero in ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’, dramatically to the platform. The fragment ended abruptly, leaving us wanting more. Cutting’s pure sound gave it an unearthly quality. To sing the final passage from George Benjamin’s opera ‘Written on Skin’, Cutting made full use of the majestic acoustic and of his vast range of pitch and vocal colour. The result was utterly modern and enthralling. The voice was in full command of the acoustic, showing just how Cutting won the Kathleen Ferrier Award and is now deemed the best young singer of 2021.

    • Not just the tantalising, sumptuous, confiding and surprising vocal communication which countertenor is, but a singer with dramatic awareness and insight, a suddenly telling lowest register, and someone already in demand by opera. Cutting showed incisive intellect in drawing up parallel or allusive examples from the world of aria and lieder. An absorbing and rewarding concert experience.

  • Purcell | Dido and Aeneas (Spirit)

    Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris
    Feb 2024

    • L’Esprit incarné par le contreténor Hugh Cutting est une superbe révélation. Le timbre est souple, chaud et cuivré, la présence scénique remarquable ... nul doute qu’on entend là un des grands contreténors de demain. The Esprit played by countertenor Hugh Cutting is a superb revelation. The timbre is supple, warm and brassy, the stage presence remarkable, ... there is no doubt that we are hearing one of the great countertenors of tomorrow.

Discography