Biography

British Mezzo-Soprano Louisa Stuart-Smith is currently studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for the Artist Diploma in Vocal Performance under the tutelage of Professor Yvonne Kenny. Louisa is grateful to be a Sidney Perry Foundation Scholar and to be generously supported by the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors and the Josephine Baker Trust. She recently graduated from the MPerf in Vocal Performance at GSMD with Distinction, during which she held a Guildhall School Trust Scholarship.

Louisa is an Alvarez Emerging Artist at Garsington Opera for the 2025 season and her recent concert work as a soloist includes performances with the London Mozart Players and the Carnegie Ensemble from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This season, she covered the role of Dorabella in Teatro Lorenzo Da Ponte’s production of Cosí Fan Tutte in Vittorio Veneto, Italy; she won a runner-up prize (Encouragement Award) in the Maryland District of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition (2024); she was the winner of the Audience Prize in the Chartered Surveyors’ Vocal Competition (2024); she was a Runner-Up in the Final of the London Bach Society’s Bach Singers Prize Competition (2024) and this month she will compete in the Semi-Final of the VIII Concurs Internacional de Cant Josep Palet in Barcelona and the Final of the Chris Treglown Award in Gloucester. She has performed as the Mezzo-Soprano Soloist in numerous oratorios, including, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle, Handel’s Messiah and Handel’s Dixit Dominus; upcoming she will sing as the Mezzo-Soprano Soloist in Haydn’s Nelson Mass at the Burwash Concerts Festival. In GSMD Opera Scenes, Louisa has sung Bianca in The Rape of Lucretia, Dorabella in Cosí Fan Tutte, Annio in La Clemenza di Tito, Irene in Tamerlano, Mab in La Jolie Fille de Perth and Nunzia in La Liberazione di Ruggiero. Louisa also regularly performs song recitals and recently joined Roderick Williams in concert as a soloist in his 22 Mansfield Street Salon concert.

Louisa is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, where she held a choral scholarship and performed numerous full operatic roles, including the title roles in Serse (2022), Rinaldo (2021) and Giulio Cesare in Egitto (2019). She also sang the roles of Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro (2021), L’Architecture in Les Arts Florissants (2019) and La Damigella in La Liberazione di Ruggiero (2020). With Southgate Youth Opera, she performed as Papagena in The Magic Flute (2016).

Other operetta and acting roles have included Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore (Minack Theatre, 2021), Tessa in The Gondoliers (2022), Peep-Bo in The Mikado (2019), Joan in Saint Joan (ADC Theatre 2019), Mother in Machinal (2019), and Voltore in Volpone (2019), as well as performing regularly in comedy sketch shows with the Cambridge Footlights. Musical theatre roles include Sally Bowles in Cabaret (2018), Ado Annie in Oklahoma! (2017) and Eponine in Les Miserables (2015).

Louisa is enthusiastic about performing new works and premiered American composer Mateo Lincoln’s song cycle The World is Too Much With Us in 2021. Recently, she performed a selection of works by Cheryl Frances-Hoad at Milton Court Concert Hall, following collaboration with the composer.

As a child, Louisa performed as the ‘Choir Boy soloist’ in Marin Alsop’s production of Bernstein’s Mass (2010, Royal Festival Hall). She sang in the Children’s Chorus in Carmen (2015, ENO), Der Rosenkavalier (2012, ENO),Turandot (2009, ENO), Hansel und Gretel (2009, Opera Holland Park) and La Boheme (2008, ENO).

In addition to her career as an opera singer, Louisa holds BA and MPhil degrees in History of Art from the University of Cambridge, and is a keen runner and a linguist.