Rachael Lloyd studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Jane Highfield and Rudolf Piernay. Her career began in her early twenties when she joined the chorus at Glyndebourne where she was awarded the Glyndebourne Wessex Award for promising young singers. There she also made her debut as Shelley in the world premiere of Jonathan Lunn’s opera Tangier Tattoo and as Meg Page in Falstaff. Since then she has sung roles with many major opera companies both in the UK and Europe. 

 

Rachael has a passion for both the Baroque and Contemporary repetoire but has performed a wide range of roles in the course of her career. Recent roles for the Royal Opera House include: Alisa/Lucia di Lammermoor, Selene/Berenice, Emily/4:48 Psychosis, Kate Pinkerton/Madama Butterfly, Wellgunde/Das Rheingold and Götterdammerung.

 

For English National Opera, Rachael has sung Pitti Sing/The Mikado, Third Lady/ The Magic Flute ,the role of Woman/Mother in the U.K. premiere of Jonathan Dove's post-apocalyptic opera The Day After, Miss Jessel/Turn of the Screw, Dido/Dido and Aeneas and Aglaonice/Orphée. 

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Other roles have included the title role in Carmen for Raymond Gubbay Ltd at the Royal Albert Hall, Cornelia/Giulio Cesare for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Mme Anderssen/A Little Night Music for Theatre Chatelet in Paris, Maddalena/Rigoletto for Iford Arts, Dido/Dido and Aeneas for Theater Thuringen in Germany, Aristea/L’Olympiade for Buxton Festival, Amastris/ Xerxes for English Touring Opera, Mother/Pay the Piper for Glyndebourne and Emily/4:48 Psychosis for Opéra national du Rhin and the Prototype Festival in New York.

 

Rachael regularly performs in concerts around the country. Highlights have included Handel’s Messiah with the OAE and The Sixteen, both Ravel’s Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarme and a Shakespeare400 concert with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall, a recital of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Elgar’s Sea Pictures at Lille Opera House, a series of Messiah’s in Kristiansund, Norway, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Gala concert with Ulster Orchestra, Amastre in a concert performance of Xerxes with Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company at St John’s, Smith Square and Grimgerde in Die Walküre with Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO. 

 

Rachael is to be found on a number of recordings. In her early twenties she was one of the soloists on the number one album of Karl Jenkins The Armed Man-A Mass for Peace and the mezzo soprano soloist on a disc of Humphrey Clucas’s Crucifixus. In 2012 she recorded the mezzo soprano solos in Patrick Hawes’s Lazarus Requiem and the role of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with the Armonico Consort both under the record label Signum Classics. In 2018 Rachael performed in the premiere recording of Gary Davison’s Requiem with Wells Cathedral Choir which was released in his 'Awake My Soul' album.