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The English soprano, Elspeth Mairwen Piggott, graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the University of York (2014), where her love for early music was first kindled. Taking courses in Renaissance Italian Madrigals, Purcell’s Mad Songs and performing at the National Centre for Early Music, she determined to become part of this world. She then studied with Veronica Veysey Campbell.
So, upon graduating, she undertook her first professional engagement understudying I Fagiolini’s devastating immersive-theatre project, inspired by the infamous life of Carlo Gesualdo, Betrayal. Since then, As well as passionately pursuing a career as a soloist, she also sings with a number of professional choirs including, including I Fagiolini (Director: Robert Hollingworth), as well as Música Secreta, Polyphony (Director: Stephen Layton), Contrapunctus and The Marian Consort (Director: Rory McCleery), into all sorts of mischief across Italy, Spain, England, Scotland and Wales. She also undertook her first professional opera role this year as Cupid in Marco Da Gagliano’s La Dafne at the Brighton Early Music Festival. Rounding out her musical experience, she has also sung with The Sixteen (Director: Harry Christophers), Eric Whitacre Singers and the Britten Sinfonia Voices, and has performed as a soloist in some of the country’s top concert venues, including the Barbican, Snape Maltings Concert Hall and St John’s Smith Square.
Recent highlights of her solo work include W.A. Mozart’s Litaniae Lauretanae at St John’s Smith Square with the European Union Chamber Orchestra, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Haydn’s Creation Mass at the Sheldonian Theatre, and MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross at the Barbican with the Britten Sinfonia. Cultivating her love of opera, she has appeared in master-classes with Andreas Scholl, Katie Mitchell, Elaine Kidd, Tom Guthrie, and Kitty Whately. Her opera roles have included Susanna in W.A. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Eurydice in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Belinda in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and Miss Wordsworth in Benjamin Britten’s opera Albert Herring.
Elspeth Piggott has been a member of the choir at Hampstead Parish Church for two wonderful years. She started as a regular when she was still living in Oxford, catching the early train to Paddington on a Sunday morning and the late one back, and making a day of it walking on Hampstead Heath or reading in one of the gorgeous Hampstead cafes between services. Moving to London in summer of 2019, however, she more than made up for it by deciding to live a 10-minute cycle away from church. She has loved being a member of the community of Hampstead Parish Church, the lovely clergy and congregation, and proud to contribute to the fantastic music scene here alongside such esteemed colleagues and friends.
As a singing teacher, Elspeth Piggott specialises in teaching sight singing to children, and has been teaching the girl choristers of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, The Frideswide Voices, since 2017. Outside of work, she has a fascination for the underworld, the queer and subversive, and it is her greatest desire to create a show marrying the Japanese art of shibari with renaissance consort singing. She currently lives in London, England. |
