Arranger and Répétiteur

Richard Peirson

Biography

Richard Peirson studied at Cambridge University, the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio. He was on the music staff of Scottish Opera from 1993 to 2001 where he worked as répétiteur, played solo piano in Britten’s The Turn of The Screw, 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 the music staff of 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 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 also 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. He made his INO debut in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel in 2020.

April 2023