Reviews
Helena in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Garsington Opera (Summer 2024)
“Among the four lovers the most compelling was Camilla Harris as Helena, who filled the auditorium with her voice and charisma and has the talent to have a stunning future.”
Simon Heffer for The Telegraph, 24 June 2024
“The quartet of lovers — Caspar Singh’s Lysander, Camilla Harris’s Helena, James Newby’s Demetrius and Stephanie Wake-Edwards’s Hermia — are superb.”
The Times, 17 June 2024
“The four young lovers are enthusiastically interpreted and very well sung by Caspar Singh, Stephanie Wake-Edwards, Camilla Harris and James Newby”
MusicOMH, 17 June 2024
“The four lovers scrap and make it up so convincingly that one feels one knows them, so gongs to Caspar Singh, Stephanie Wake-Edwards, James Newby, and Camilla Harris.”
iNews, 17 June 2024
“Camilla Harris’ smooth-voiced Helena”
The Stage, 17 June 2024
“A very fine quartet of lovers includes Camilla Harris as Helena…”
Financial Times, 17 June 2024
Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte for Garsington Opera (Summer 2022):
“…the ladies were a triumphant trio. Camilla Harris had been the understudy for Fiordiligi, and when the original soprano in the role had to withdraw through illness, she took over with sensational results. Dignified in manner, elegant in presence and scrupulously musical in interpretation, her arias were high points, fearlessly negotiating the challenges yet producing beautifully soft tone when required.” ★★★★
— Melanie Eskenazi for Music OMH
“Singing Fiordiligi with infinite grace, the soprano Camilla Harris becomes the beating heart of this sparkling production,” ★★★★★
— Michael Church for iNews
“Camilla Harris’s commandingly sung Fiordiligi — remarkably, her stage debut with a major company.” ★★★★
— Neil Fisher for The Times
“Camilla Harris sings Fiordiligi’s “Come scoglio” with a secure command of its perilous leaps of register, and crucially without putting on airs of eternal chastity.” ★★★★
— Peter Quantrill for The Arts Desk
“Camilla Harris is an impressively steadfast Fiordiligi, only rarely breaking into smiles. Her ‘Come scoglio’ really sounded as if ‘this lady’s not for turning’, confidently dispatching the aria’s demanding leaps and rising admirably to the challenge of ‘Per pietà’”
— David Truslove for Opera Today
“Fiordiligi, (Camilla Harris) is an elegant blonde with a warm, sweet tone who, though virginal in looks is not above a fit of giggles. Harris was promoted from understudy at very short notice after impressing the artistic team.” ★★★★
— Amanda Holloway for The Stage
“Similarly distinctively drawn were the sisters from a thrilling Camilla Harris as a more serious and more difficult to seduce Fiordiligi… Camilla Harris well deserved the audience’s enthusiasm at the curtain call.”
— Mike Smith for Opera Scene
'“…the women [sang] radiantly… Leech’s Dorabella will have made her friends, as will the Fiordiligi of Camilla Harris, a young soprano who stepped up from the chorus to assume a role she had been booked only to cover. Harris, too, is a talent to be reckoned with… a singer fully deserving of her place in the sun. Together their voices blended with rapt euphony, while their big individual moments, from Leech’s ‘È amore un Ladroncello’ to Harris’s ‘Come Scoglio’, were thrilling and full of import.”
— Mark Valencia for Opera Magazine
Countess in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro for HGO (Nov 2021):
“Heading the cast were a fine Count and Countess Almaviva... Camilla Harris’s Countess truly had one sit up upon her vocal appearance—what wonderful cunning on Da Ponte’s part to save his trump card until the second act—in a performance as beautifully sung as it was intelligently presented… Long after the final chord, one remained haunted by the devastation on the Countess’s face following her closing (false) benediction.”
— Mark Berry for Opera Today and Boulezian
“…the superb lyricism of Camilla Harris’s Countess, her two big numbers the epitome of Mozartean charm and emotional depth. Obviously a young Countess, her voice has real command; and she was able to bring a light touch to the role at times, too.”
— Colin Clarke for Seen and Heard International
“Camilla Harris as the Countess gave all the sadness and gravity needed for Porgi amor”
— Owen Davies for Plays to See
“Camilla Harris as the betrayed contessa sings a heart-rending Dove Sono i Bei Momenti,”
— Inge Kjemtrup for The Stage
La Comtesse in Massenet's Chérubin with Royal Academy Opera (April 2020):
"Camilla Harris (The Countess) and Elspeth Marrow (The Baroness) were mischievously entertaining as two bored aristocrats in search of some fun”
— Claire Seymour for Opera Today
Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Royal Academy Opera (November 2019):
“Camilla Harris’s Pamina was also a fine assumption. She caught the pathos of the fiendish yet simple-sounding ‘Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden’…
— Alexander Campbell for Classical Source
"Highlights, besides the narrator, included the chorales, Jesus and Camilla Harris’ Air ‘O Heart, melt in weeping’...Camilla Harris had a delightful voice and showed phenomenal sensitivity and sympathy when she sang ‘O Heart, melt in weeping’."
— Rosemary Westwell for Ely Standard (St John Passion at Ely Cathedral)
"As the Israelite Boy, Camilla Harris displayed a lovely sheen and graceful phrasing in her single aria".
— Claire Seymour, Opera Today (Esther at the London Handel Festival 22/03/18)
"...all endeared themselves to the audience with their very human representations of the three Archangels, but special mention must be made of the beautiful control and bell-like clarity of Camilla Harris’ singing"
— Richard Allaway. (Haydn's Creation at Bishops Stortford College 19/03/17)
"The well-known cat duet (Camilla Harris and Jordan Carlton) had excellent dramatic performances by the two younger singers, who kept beautifully in character"
"The shepherdesses from the torn wallpaper, led by Rebecca Madden and Camilla Harris and were delightful. Camilla Harris returned later in an altogether less innocent guise as one of the two cats, in a sexed-up take on Rossini’s cat duet alongside Jordan Carlton."
— Jane Shuttleworth, Bach Track
"All the singing was excellent, but particularly worthy of praise are Alexander Banfield for his portrayals of the Wedgwood teapot and the tree frog, Ana Fernandez Guerra as the squirrel, and Camilla Harris and Jordan Carlton for their cat duet."
"To end, soprano Camilla Harris read movingly from Anne Boleyn’s letter to Henry written from the Tower of London before her death".
"The title of the final soprano aria “Zerfließe, mein Herze” translates as “melt my heart”, and nothing more needs to be said – this was exactly what Camilla Harris did."
— Jane Shuttleworth, Music Durham
"...Camilla Harris who sang the final aria. This last performance was really special and set the tone for the closing section of the piece beautifully."
— Michael Vasmer, The Bubble
"Milly Harris’s Pamina was feminine and believable. Her clear, liquid voice lent itself well to varied situations and her sorrowful lament was especially touching..."
"Pamina’s innocence and expressive desires were particularly exploited in her Act Two lament – the anguish was beautifully demonstrated with her sumptuous melismas."
Image at top: © Julian Guidera (Fiordiligi at Garsington Opera Summer 2022)