Winner of the Prix d’Excellence de Maîtres du Chant 2025, French-British mezzo-soprano BERNADETTE JOHNS was a member of the 2023-25 opera studio at the Opéra national du Rhin. She is a graduate of the Royal Academy Opera (RAO) course at the Royal Academy of Music.

Roles at the Opéra national du Rhin include Flora Bervoix in La Traviata, La Mère in Les Contes d’Hoffmann (also at Opéra de Reims), Second Herd-Girl in Peer Gynt and Mallika (cover) in Lakmé. She originated the role of Madame Hucklebee in a new French production of The Fantasticks and featured as a mezzo soloist in Sweeney Todd, Les Noces and in recitals Handel and his contemporaries and Dancing to Schubert in the 21st Century.

Roles in the UK include Arminio (cover, Royal Ballet and Opera), Carmen (Longborough Festival Opera), Dido (Dido & Aeneas, Waterperry Opera Festival), Ludmila (The Bartered Bride, Garsington Opera), Sorceress (Dido and Aeneas, Bjarte Eike and Academy Baroque Soloists), Der Komponist (Ariadne auf Naxos, RAO) Tirinto (Imeneo, RAO), Concepción (L’heure espagnole, RAO), Dorabella (cover, Così fan tutte, RAO), Hippolyta (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RAO), Second Lady (Francesca Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero, Longborough Festival Opera), Zita (Gianni Schicchi, RAO) and Maman (L’enfant et les sortilèges, RAO).

Concert performances include Brahms Alto Rhapsody at Cadogan Hall, Handel Messiah at Nevill Holt Opera, Haydn Theresienmesse at Saffron Hall and recitals at Wigmore Hall, Leeds Song Festival and Oxford International Song Festival. During her studies at the Royal Academy she was appointed Bach Scholar, appearing as soloist in concerts such as St Matthew Passion with Trevor Pinnock, B Minor Mass with Masaaki Suzuki, BWV106 ‘Actus Tragicus’ with Philippe Herreweghe and BWV54 ‘Widerstehe doch der Sünde’ with Rachel Podger. 

Bernadette was a finalist in the Bicentenary Prize at Wigmore Hall in 2022. She won Second Prize (2021) and the Song Prize (2019) in the Richard Lewis Award, Second Prize in the Joan Chisell Schumann Prize, and was a Sybil Tutton Opera Award holder. She won the HRH Princess Alice Duchess of Gloucester Award for Exemplary Studentship in 2021 and holds a Masters with Distinction, DipRAM for outstanding final recital and an Advanced Diploma in Opera from the Royal Academy of Music. She previously studied Music as a choral scholar at The Queen’s College, Oxford.

Biography not to be reproduced without permission.