^{FIRST PUBLISHED 18 MAY 2025}

There are voices that fit seamlessly into any ensemble, and there are those that can't help but stand out. Helen Charlston's deeply resonant mezzo is one of the latter that will become more and more recognisable as the decade progresses. It is the sort of voice that one would normally associate with the 19th-century lyric opera stage, easily big enough to tackle Verdi and Puccini. ‘I might sing it eventually,’ she concedes. ‘My voice certainly has the dramatic potential.’ For the moment, though, her focus is largely on the Baroque.

This spring sees the release of Helen's next solo album, devoted to Purcell's songs, with Sounds Baroque – Jonathan Manson (bass viol), William Carter (theorbo, baroque guitar) and Julian Perkins (harpsichord, organ). Many of the songs included, along with several by John Eccles, John Blow, Christopher Simpson and Henry Purcell's younger brother, Daniel, were written for the plays staged by Thomas Betterton, and often for voices very different from Helen's, higher in the register and often portraying characters in trouble.

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_{Helen Charlston talks about Purcell's 'The Cares of Lovers', first released as a single from the new album.}

‘There are some I have to transpose down for my voice, but this music has so much flexibility, I can make the change as long as the players (and temperaments) don't panic. I wouldn't be popular if I chose E flat minor!’ Her voice emphasises the characters' strength rather than vulnerability. ‘Perhaps there is less of the “woe is me.” I could do a whole world of rage songs.’ Her second CD with Delphian records - Battle Cry, She Speaks - won the 2023 BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and a Gramophone Award. ‘I think this music is about moments of change and fluctuation, those that turn the story.’ That is reflected in the title of this latest album, If the Fates allow ‘It's amazing to see on the page the flickers of Italian style in this music that prefigures Handel.’

‘This album grew from that time in 2021 when a live stream was the only thing we could do, so it is very connected with COVID and perhaps the choice of songs reflects that. These are pieces I love, which was even more true during COVID. We recorded in 2022 and it has taken a while to release but it's the perfect start to my relationship with BIS Records.’ BIS has a reputation of insisting on studio perfection rather than aiming for a live atmosphere where the performance might be slightly flawed. ‘Luckily I like to do lots of takes,’ Helen grins. It was a period that also coincided with her time as one of the very select group chosen by Radio 3 to be BBC New Generation Artists.

Purcell has been ever present in her career. ‘I've sung a lot of Didos, fifty per cent of them with Les Arts Florissants. Dido reflects the way I think of English music; the best collision of music and poetry so that you cannot take them apart, they feel natural together. I was part of Le Jardin des Voix,’ the young voices group for Les Arts Florissants in Paris, ‘in 2021/22, which was very useful coming out of COVID. It was the only thing that was happening.’ It has also had a profound effect on the approach Helen has to the music.

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_{Dido's Lament ('When I am laid') - Purcell. Film inspired by Coldplay | Helen Charlston & OAE}

That link continues in another setting in the next few months. When Helen and I spoke, she was in Barcelona, rehearsing for a production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at Liceu (25 May–7 June) as Sesto alongside the innovative Catalan countertenor, Xavier Sabata, conducted by William Christie, the founder of Les Arts Florissants. ‘I hope that Handel will always be a big part of my life,’ Helen said. ‘I'm tall so the trouser roles are great for me.” On her wish list are Ruggiero in Alcina and Ariodante, “and I'll take any opportunity to sing Irene in Theodora’.

There are plenty of other areas of music about which Helen is enthusiastic. ‘I love contemporary music – I'm interested in finding out what my voice can do. Composers who know your voice will show you something you'd never noticed’. In July, she will be singing new lute songs by Anna Disley-Simpson at Merchant Adventurers Hall for York Early Music Festival in a sell-out programme called Heaven and Hell with lutenist Toby Carr. In March next year, for Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, she will create the role of Marianne alongside Mary Bevan (as Neola) in Michel van der Aa's Theory of Flames, a science-fiction work that will mix film and music theatre. It will be a co-production with Norwegian Opera and the Bregenz Festival in Austria.

In her singing life there is room for more conventional music, naturally. ‘I love singing Mahler and I sing it often – I got to perform his music a lot with orchestras when I was a BBC New Generation Artist. I couldn't live without Mahler and Bach – or Schubert. I feel really at home in German song. There's also something in me that comes alive when singing Schumann.’

by Simon Mundy

'If the Fates allow – Music By Purcell And His Contemporaries' was supported by a grant from Continuo Foundation. The CD will be released 23 May on BIS Records. Helen will also be opening the York Early Music Festival with Fretwork on 4 July in a programme of Orlando Gibbons and Nico Muhly.