ABOUT

With recent success as Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola at both the Bregenzer Festspiele and English National Opera, Aaron Godfrey-Mayes is one of today’s most appealing and fastest-rising British tenors. Other recent and upcoming highlights include Tamino in Die Zauberflöte at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Ernesto in Don Pasquale with Opera North, 3. Knappe in Parsifal at the Semperoper Dresden, Ferrando in Così fan tutte with the Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra, and a return to the Bregenzer Festspiele for the world premiere of Daníel Bjarnason’s Passion of the Common Man.

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Aaron is equally in demand on the concert platform, where his repertoire includes the tenor solos in Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Dudok Ensemble), St John Passion (Petersfield Music Festival), and Mass in B Minor (Saarbrücken and Cambridge), as well as cantatas with the RAM Kohn Foundation Bach Cantata Series and at the Hauptkirche St. Jacobi, Hamburg. This season’s engagements include Mozart’s Davide Penitente and Mendelssohn’s Christus, a Telemann programme with the Händelfestspielorchester Halle, Weill’s Kaddish in Hamburg, and Handel’s Messiah with Finland’s Jyväskylä Sinfonia.

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A recent graduate of the Opernstudio at the Hamburg State Opera, he performed 15 roles over two seasons, including Un Venditore di Canzonette in Il tabarro, Fourth Jew in Salome, The Young Sailor/Shepherd in Tristan und Isolde, Ruiz in Il trovatore, Wilhelm in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Giuseppe in La traviata, Gardist 1 in Manon, Graf Albert in Die tote Stadt, Nachbar in Dollhouse, and Mère Grenu/Le Patron in Ciboulette. During this time, he collaborated with leading conductors including Alexander Soddy, Paolo Arrivabeni, Stefano Ranzani, Daniele Gatti, Leo Hussain, Giedrė Šlekytė, Kent Nagano, and Yoel Gamzou.

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From 2021 to 2023, Aaron was a Studio Artist at Mascarade Emerging Artists in Florence. During his time there, he performed regularly in concerts at the Palazzo Corsini, presented excerpts from Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and appeared as Ali in Adina at the Rossini in Wildbad Bel Canto Opera Festival.

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Aaron has received numerous awards, including First Prize in the Royal Academy of Music Pavarotti Prize, Third Prize and the Wil Keune Mozart Prize at the 2022 Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition, First Prize at the David Clover Festival of Music Singers’ Platform, the Nineteenth Century Opera Prize at the National Mozart Singing Competition, First Prize in the Nottinghamshire Masonic Music Association Competition, and a prize in the Richard Lewis/Jean Shanks Award.

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Aaron is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied as an ABRSM scholar.