Arranger and Répétiteur

Richard Peirson

The Bartered Bride

Biography

Richard Peirson made his Irish National Opera debut with Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel in 2020, as both arranger and conductor. He also rescored Massenet’s Werther and Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus for chamber ensemble for INO. A graduate of Cambridge University, the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio, he worked with Scottish Opera from 1993 to 2001 as répétiteur, played solo piano in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and harpsichord in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro. He was chorus master for Gavin Bryars’s Medea and was music director for Scottish Opera’s production of Puccini’s La bohème. He joined English National Opera in 2005 and has worked with many leading conductors including Charles Mackerras, Edward Gardner, Richard Hickox, Richard Armstrong and Mark Wigglesworth. He was also music director of the Norfolk-based Orange Opera from 2001 to 2006. He has given numerous recitals with international singers including John Tomlinson, Stuart Skelton, Lisa Milne, William Dazeley and Mary Bevan. He works as a freelance coach and accompanist and has given many lecture recitals for the Chelsea- based opera group Divas and Scholars. His setting of WB Yeats’s He wishes for the cloths of Heaven is published by Stainer and Bell.

November 2025