Carola Darwin combines a career as an opera and concert singer with research and writing about music. After gaining a degree in Chemistry from Cambridge University, she trained as a singer at Royal Northern College of Music and was awarded a PhD in Music from the University of Sheffield.
Her research into the Viennese composer Johanna Müller-Hermann was part of BBC Radio 3’s Five Women Composers project in 2017-18. She was also interviewed on Radio 3 when Müller-Hermann was Composer of the Week in 2023. Her book The Other Voice: Women’s Musical Creativity in Alma Mahler’s Vienna is forthcoming from Equinox publishing. In February 2026, Carola will be presenting on her research for the Darwin College Lectures in Cambridge.
Publications include a chapter on the composer and conductor Odaline de la Martinez in The Routledge Handbook to Women and Musical Leadership (2024) and a chapter on Elizabeth Maconchy’s relationship with the BBC in Maconchy in Context (CUP, 2026)
Carola recently recorded a CD of songs and solo piano music by Viennese composers Johanna Müller-Hermann and Mathilde Kralik, with pianist Marie-Noëlle Kendall. In 2019, she commissioned a song cycle for voice and string quartet by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, on texts about evolution and the environment. She premièred it with the Gildas Quartet at the Oxford Lieder Festival.
Operatic roles include Fox (The Cunning Little Vixen, Surrey Opera), Countess (The Marriage of Figaro, Opera! Festival, Netherlands), Berta, (The Barber of Seville, Opera East), Sofia (I Lombardi, UCOpera), Annina (La Traviata, Hampstead Garden Opera). She has also sung Elettra (Idomeneo), Governess (The Turn of the Screw) Mimi (La Bohème) Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Pat Nixon (Nixon in China).
Her multi-media one-woman show The Vienna Show: Music and Gender in fin-de-siècle Vienna has been seen in Winnipeg, Canada and also in London, Sheffield and Liverpool. Concert work includes a series with the Hermitage String Quartet, Héloise in Maconchy’s Héloise and Abelard and solos for Park Lane Group’s Celebration for Elizabeth (Purcell Room).
Carola is an Academic Professor at the Royal College of Music, where she teaches Music History and was recently appointed Lay Chaplain. She lives in London with her husband and two teenage sons.
