Marcus Farnsworth was awarded first prize in the 2009 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, and the Song Prize at the 2011 Kathleen Ferrier Competition. He completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in 2011, where roles included Guglielmo (Così fan tutte); Sid (Albert Herring); Oreste (Cavalli’s Giasone) and Meredith in Peter Maxwell Davies’s Kommilitonen!

Recent and future opera plans include Eddy in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek for Music Theatre Wales; Novice’s Friend in a new production of Britten’s Billy Budd for English National Opera; the title role in Britten’s Owen Wingrave as part of the International Chamber Music Festival in Nuremberg, and, in concert, Kilian in Der Freischütz with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis; Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas) for the Early Opera Company and Christian Curnyn at the Wigmore Hall and a recording of Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth with the Classical Opera Company.

Future recitals include Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin for the Oxford Lieder Festival and at St John’s, Smith Square, London; a Schubertiade with The Prince Consort in Perth and Britten’s Tit for Tat with Malcolm Martineau and the Canticles with Julius Drake and Mark Padmore, as part of the Wigmore Hall’s Britten Festival in 2012.

On the concert platform plans include Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3 with the LSO and Sir Colin Davis; Haydn’s Paukenmesse with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Labardie; St Matthew Passion (Christ and arias) in Lausanne, Switzerland and Wroclaw, Poland with the Gabrieli Consort and Paul McCreesh; Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King with the Wermlands Opera Orchestra, Karlstad, Sweden and a return to the Newbury Spring Festival in May 2012 to sing Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem. Marcus will also make appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the coming seasons.

Marcus has recently performed Bach’s Cantata No. 82 Ich habe Genug and Zelenka’s The Lamentations of Jeremiah with the Academy of Ancient Music in the UK and on tour in France with whom he has also sung Bach’s St John Passion in London and Cambridge and Charpentier’s Te Deum at the Three Choirs Festival. Other concert appearances have included the St John Passion with the Gabrieli Consort in Berlin.