Photo © Jacobus Snyman
“Best of all was Michael Mofidian as Nick Shadow. The power and seductive beauty of his voice were remarkable: in short, he inhabited the role completely, a Don Giovanni de luxe in the making.” Opera Magazine
Opera highlights this season include the title roles of Il Turco in Italia for Glyndebourne and of Le Nozze di Figaro for Welsh National Opera, as well as Masetto (Don Giovanni) in a new production at the Bayerische Staatsoper conducted by Vladimir Jurowsky. In concert he performs Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and St Matthew Passion, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. Roles in future seasons include Creon (Œdipus rex), Leporello (Don Giovanni), Lord Sidney (Il Viaggio a Reims), Alidoro (La Cenerentola) and Osmin (Die Entführung aus dem Serail).
In the 2023/24 season he made his début at the Teatro Real, Madrid as Créon (Medea), returned to Covent Garden as Colline (La Bohème) and Der Pfleger des Orest (Elektra), and made highly-acclaimed role débuts as Polyphemus (Acis and Galatea) for the Potsdamer Winteroper and as Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress) at the Grange Festival. In concert he performed Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the RSNO at the Edinburgh International Festival under Sir Andrew Davis, Haydn’s Creation with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner and Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.
Having made his début at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in the Cantata in onore del sommo pontifice Pio IX in 2023, he was invited back for the 2024 Festival for the roles of Fenicio (Ermione) and Lord Sidney.
His operatic engagements in previous seasons include returns to Covent Garden as Colline (2022) and Masetto (2021), his Scottish Opera début as Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte), his début at the Opéra de Rouen as Theseus (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), a return to the Glyndebourne Festival as Masetto while also covering Leporello, and, at the Salzburg Festival, Angelotti (Tosca) and Kuligin (Kat’a Kabanová) under the respective bâtons of Marco Armiliato and Jakub Hruša.
From 2018-2020 he was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists’ Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, performing many roles under conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Antonio Pappano and Edward Gardner and working with directors including Sir David McVicar, Christof Loy and Barrie Kosky. He was a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne in 2018 and a member of the Jeune Ensemble at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in the 2021/22 season.
He was soloist at the First Night of the BBC Proms in 2021 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska, and returned in 2023 for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth.
He also made his début with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome as the Mandarin in a concert performance and CD recording of Turandot under Sir Antonio Pappano for Warner Classics.
In recital, he has performed with pianists Keval Shah, Jâms Coleman, Sholto Kynoch, Anna Tilbrook, Julius Drake and Malcolm Martineau with numerous performances at the Wigmore Hall, the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, City Halls Glasgow and at the Oxford Lieder and Leeds Lieder festivals. He has been broadcast numerous times on BBC Radio 3.
In addition to singing he is also a composer who has written orchestral works, chamber music, songs and pieces for vocal ensemble.
He was born in Glasgow and graduated from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Pavarotti Prize in 2017. In 2018 he won the Singers’ Prize in the Royal Over-Seas League Competition and the Bruce Millar Gulliver Prize. He is bilingual in French and English, and proficient in Italian and German.