Singers on Singing: Signature Roles is a new educational series on opera, exclusively made for the Hampsong Foundation, in which distinguished singers discuss in depth roles for which they have been especially famously acclaimed.

The features are available for streaming on demand and each program is around 1 hour’s duration. Extracts from the artists’ recorded interpretations of their roles are heard as musical illustrations.

The features not only examine musical, vocal, dramatic and psychological elements of the roles but also consider differing approaches the artists have experienced from various stage directors. The value of Singers on Singing: Signature Roles is thus uniquely instructive in that it offers listeners, and very particularly young singers and students, opportunities to discover directly from great master singers the details, challenges and processes of performing operatic masterworks from vocal, musical and also staging perspectives.

A database of subjects discussed and musical extracts that are played is available for each feature, in particular benefitting students and researchers of opera.

Singers on Singing: Signature Roles begins with the bass Sir John Tomlinson discussing the role of Wotan in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The Hampsong Foundation is delighted that Warner Classics is exclusively partnering in Singers on Singing: Signature Roles by providing extracts from its great catalogue of recordings for the musical illustrations.

Singers on Singing: Signature Roles is hosted and produced by award-winning documentarian Jon Tolansky.