Carola Darwin

Carola Darwin is an English soprano singer She is the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin and sister of the novelist Emma Darwin.

Biography
Darwin was born and brought up in London. Her father is Henry Galton Darwin, a lawyer in the Foreign Office, son of Sir Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of Sir George Darwin, and great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Her mother Jane (née Christie) is an English teacher, so they spent three years commuting between London and Brussels. She has two sisters; Emma and Sophia (Sophia Katherine).

Darwin studied chemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge. After briefly working as a teacher and a journalist she attended the Royal Northern College of Music where she received a Master of Music degree. She subsequently earned a scholarship to study at the Banff Centre for the Arts and is currently studying for a PhD at Sheffield University.

Performances

Darwin's opera performances include the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Berta in The Barber of Seville, Pat Nixon in Nixon in China, the Governess in The Turn of the Screw and Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen, as well as Mimi in La Bohème, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, and Michaela in Carmen. In March 2007 she was the vocal soloist for Celebration for Elizabeth (a centenary tribute to the composer Elizabeth Maconchy) at the Purcell Room. Other concert performances include Beethoven's Mass in C, the Mozart Requiem, Mahler's Symphony No 4, Poulenc's Stabat Mater and Fanshawe's African Sanctus, and recitals throughout Britain.

As well as classical opera and recital work she has performed her own multi-media creation "The Vienna Show: Music and Gender in the Viennese Fin-de-siècle", based on research for a PhD in Music that she is currently completing at the University of Sheffield.

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