Classical Vocal Training
Biography
Sheila Barnes is a successful and much sought-after singing teacher with private studios in London and Suffolk. For the past ten years, she has been a regular singing teacher at the University of Cambridge, Trinity College, where she teaches choral scholars and others. Her work with talented singers at Cambridge has launched important careers.
Professional singers who are pupils of Sheila Barnes appear regularly with the English National Opera, Garsington Opera, Scottish Opera, Opera North, Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Her pupils working as ensemble singers perform regularly with the Tallis Scholars, the Sixteen, Westminster Abbey Choir, St. Paul's Cathedral Choir, the BBC Singers, the Dunedin Consort, the Netherlands Bach Vereiniging, Capella Pratensis, Polyphony, Cardinall's Musicke, Balthasar Neumann Chor, La Nuova Musica and Exaudi.
Since coming to the UK from New York in 1991, Sheila has earned an international reputation as vocal pedagogue. Outside the UK, she has taught masterclasses and singing courses in Italy, Israel, Sardinia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and Spain. She has been a guest lecturer at the London Trinity College of Music, and for 12 years taught summer vocal workshops at the Dartington International Summer School, where she was also a frequent recitalist. She has lectured on the Voice for composers at the Aldeburgh Music Jerwood Opera Writing workshop, and has teamed up with ENT surgeon and voice specialist Mr. Declan Costello to lecture on the voice to Cambridge University students.
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In 2010 she was guest vocal consultant to the house singers at the Opera House in Kiel, Germany.
In 2012 she produced Dido and Aeneas for Festival Musica Insieme Panicale, Umbria, with singers from the UK and other countries of Europe, an Italian choir and orchestra.
As vocal consultant, she has worked with the London-based group "La Nuova Musica" both in a residency at Aldeburgh Music and on a recording project ("Dixit Dominus", Harmonia Mundi USA) in London, culminating in a concert for Cambridge Early Music.
Since 2008 she has been organising Italian language and singing courses in Italy, where her students have performed at the Basilica di San Pietro in Perugia (reputedly Herbert von Karajan’s favourite acoustic) and in Le Torre di Bagnara. In 2015 she organised and taught the “Lingua e Lirica” course in Mondavio, Le Marche, a two-week residential combining Italian language study with intensive instruction in diction, taught by Matteo dalle Fratte, founder of Melofonetica, with lessons and masterclasses in bel canto singing style, taught by Sheila.
Lingua e Lirica with Melofonetica moved back to Perugia, to the Convento di San Francesco del Monte in both 2016 and 2017, and in 2017 Sheila was invited to be a guest Faculty member at MusicFestPerugia, a programme which brings 200 young people from all over the world to the city each summer. That invitation was re-extended in 2020 but proved a casualty of the Coronavirus crisis, put on hold for a more auspicious time.
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In August 2019 she was invited to China to teach at the first-ever Shenzhen Singing Festival and to adjudicate the grand finale, a bel canto singing competition, together with Nelly Miricioiu, Maciej Pikulski and Antonello Allemandi. Her masterclass was telecast throughout China.
Education & Training
Sheila Barnes earned an undergraduate degree in music with distinction at Trinity University in America (San Antonio, Texas), before winning a national competition for a woman's graduate study fellowship at Yale University in a master's programme at the Yale School of Music.
While at Yale, she was sent on scholarship to study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (with Erik Werba and Rita Streich) and to study in France with Pierre Bernac, who became an involved mentor, helping Sheila to devise a programme for her New York recital debut.
During her years at Yale, she was a Vocal Fellow at the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood, where she sang under the baton of Leonard Bernstein and was featured singing contemporary vocal chamber music (George Crumb).
Following her three years at Yale, she was awarded a vocal fellowship to the Juilliard School's American Opera Center in New York, where she sang under the baton of French composer and conductor Manuel Rosenthal.
Early Career
Sheila Barnes made her opera debut in Canada at the Guelph Spring Festival as Galatea in Acis and Galatea. Her European opera debut took place at the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi under Giancarlo Menotti, singing the role of Lucia in Britten's Rape of Lucretia.
Her development as an opera singer was fostered by her participation in two American operatic apprentice programmes: at Wolf Trap Opera (Washington, D.C.) and at the Houston Opera Studio, of which she was a founding member.
Following these apprenticeships, she was launched into a hectic schedule of learning roles and performing with major American opera companies: Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Houston Grand Opera, Kentucky Opera, the Dallas Opera and the New York City Opera.
Her early musical experience at school and university in choral music combined with her naturalistic approach to the text made her an ideal oratorio singer. In oratorio she performed with the Toronto Symphony, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Festival Singers of Canada, the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, the Yale Symphony, the New Haven Symphony, the Houston Symphony, and Agrupacion Beethoven (Santiago, Chile).
Starting her career in the city some consider the apogee of musical excellence, Sheila sang with the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Bronx Opera, the Composer’s Showcase at Lincoln Center, the Music Theatre Group/Lenox Arts Centre, and the New York City Opera. She made her recital debut as winner of a singing competition at Carnegie Recital Hall, which brought her to the attention of Andrew Porter, celebrated British music critic at the New Yorker.
The composer and critic Virgil Thomson chose her for the revival of his opera "The Mother of Us All" at Lincoln Center in celebration of his 90th birthday. She also appeared with the rest of the cast and Virgil Thomson on CBS television for the Kennedy Center Honors.