Jack Holton was a Young Artist on the Global Talent Programme at the National Opera Studio, having previously trained on the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama under John Evans and originally attending the Guildhall as an actor. He is the recipient of a Help Musicians Sybil Tutton Opera Award and an Opera Awards Foundation Bursary, winner of the Musicians’ Company 2022 Saloman Seelig Award and a Young Artist with Opera Prelude.
Recent and future engagements include Count Le nozze di Figaro (Oxford Opera), Tarquinius The Rape of Lucretia (Hampstead Garden Opera), Maximilian Candide and covering Count Le nozze di Figaro and Ned Keene Peter Grimes (Welsh National Opera), Jake Wallace La fanciulla del West, Fiorello Il barbiere di Siviglia and covering Flowerdew Itch (Opera Holland Park), Sam Trouble in Tahiti and Baritone The Seven Deadly Sins (Opera Prelude at Opera Holland Park), Count Horn Un ballo in maschera (Chelsea Opera Group) and covering Guglielmo Così fan tutte (Opera North).
During his time at the National Opera Studio, Jack performed Figaro Le nozze di Figaro, Figaro Il barbiere di Siviglia and Belcore L’elisir d’amore as part of the National Opera Studio’s residency at Welsh National Opera, as well as Youth and Love, a concert of song at Wigmore Hall.
Previous roles include Count Anckarström Un ballo in maschera (Opera Holland Park Young Artist), Le Podestat Le docteur Miracle and Le Baron de Pictordu Cendrillon (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Don Parmenione L’occasione fa il ladro (British Youth Opera), Sky Masterson Guys and Dolls (West Green House Opera), Don Giovanni (Rogue Opera and The Merry Opera Company), Eugene Onegin (Oxford Alternative Orchestra/The People’s Opera), 3rd Bandit Don Quichotte (Wexford Festival Opera) and Count The Marriage of Figaro (Hewletts Opera).
At the Guildhall School in 2022, Jack performed Simon Miss Fortune, Ben The Telephone and Der Zar Der Zar lässt sich photographieren. At Opera Holland Park he performed La Poigne Margot la Rouge, and he sang Master Page Sir John in Love for British Youth Opera.
Other significant performances include Elder Brother The Hogboon and one of the Princes des ténèbres La damnation de Faust, both under Sir Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the baritone solo in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella under Joshua Weilerstein at Milton Court Concert Hall.
Jack has also performed Sam Trouble in Tahiti with Opera Prelude at Opera Holland Park and appeared in recitals including the London Song Festival, where his programme of French song was praised for its rich, dark-toned baritone and expressive musicianship.
Trouble in Tahiti stands or falls on effective character portrayals of the unhappy couple, Sam and Dinah – and in this, Jack Holton and Alexandria Moon can firmly declare “mission accomplished”. Holton projected utter selfishness, his personal obsessions sung with enthusiasm and his lack of self-awareness hilariously exposed in his interactions with his (silent) secretary...... This provides the setting for the best vocal passages: Moon sang “I was standing in a garden” with creamy timbre and expressive nostalgia and imagination; she and Holton were unbearably wistful in the duet (if you can call it that) where they sing to the audience – but not to each other – of how they cannot bear to be together but cannot understand why (the reasons are all too obvious to the audience).
Bachtrack (August 2026)
Jack Holton and Alexandria Moon bring their characters to life with light and shade and vocal confidence, a very believable couple, all told.
Plays to See (August 2026)
The weight of the story falls the two disaffected, disagreeable spouses, still in their mid-20s - this is the 1950s remember! Jack Holton could have stepped out of an early season of Mad Men (Peiyao Wang’s costumes are perfect) and, if he lacks Don Draper’s dangerous charm, he’s supposed to. Alexandria Moon is wonderful as Dinah, her acting superb in her infantalising doll dresses and her mezzo-soprano filling a space that can be a challenge even to seasoned campaigners. Their meeting on the street, sensitively staged by director, Valeria Perboni, is understated, but still devastating, as the two people who woke up together and will fall asleep together, lie brazenly to avoid spending any time at all in each other’s company in the daytime. You see - terrifying!
Broadway World (August 2026)
In Trouble in Tahiti the two principals formed a well-contrasted pair: Alexandria Moon’s Dinah versatile in her despair, nostalgia, and peevish frustration, compared with the austere control of Jack Holton’s emotionally indifferent and uncommitted Sam – the personification of today’s mindless, vacuous manosphere as much as that of the 1950s, in his obsession with business success and the gym over human contact and flourishing.
Opera Today (August 2026)
But the vocal honours go to Ed Lyon’s tireless, textured tenor lyricism as Candide; Soraya Mafi’s immaculately voiced, archly personified Cunégonde (her Glitter and Be Gay is an absolute coloratura classic); Jack Holton’s airily ambivalent Maximilian; and Amy J Payne’s joyous Old Lady
The Stage (September 2025)
Jack Holton is absurd in the queer-coded role of Maximillian, his baritone song and frilly stage presence adding to the show’s funny side
Buzz Magazine (September 2025)
Jack Holton displayed a dark, almost chestnut toned voice and his rich sound gave a gravity to his performances, and many of his early songs in the recital featured some of Hahn's minimal melodies, to which Holton brought gravitas and depth, along with a real feeling for the sound of a French baritone.
So that the calm line in En Sourdine was rendered profoundly expressive, and the opening of Si mes vers avaient des ailes had a sober solidity to them, before shading into real passion, whilst Trois jours de vendange ended on a sober, but profoundly expressive monotone with bells in the piano. La Nuit featured a richly expressive sense of darkness and the song was written when Hahn was just 17. In his final solo of the evening, Chanson d'Automne Holton drew on a vein of seductive melancholy in what is a rather haunting melody
Planet Hugill (November 2024)
there is stylish support from Jihoon Kim as a saintly Don Basilio, Jack Holton as Fiorello...
Telegraph (June 2024)
Other small roles go well in the hands of Jack Holton’s Fiorello and Robert Garland’s Officer.
The Stage (June 2024)
Jack Holton’s engaging physical presence as Fiorello suggests his potential for larger roles.
The Reviews Hub (June 2024)
The interjections of the two conspirators, Counts Ribbing and Horn, were delivered with urgency and dramatic intensity by the basses Thomas D. Hopkinson and Jack Holton respectively, sharpening the tension.
Opera (January 2024)
Pig, Jonathan Dove's mini-opera from 1992 is a wonderful three-hander. Jack Holton was both hilarious and terrified in the title role, and augmented his lyrical and anguished vocal lines with some nimble stage movement, characterful facial expressions and delightful snorts, grunts and snores. Samantha Quillish was exultantly sadistic with every note she sang and movement she made, as if she was an avatar of fiendish hunger, while Sarah Seunghwa Chae's desperate attempts to bargain with her for the life of Holton's Pig were heartfelt and believable. The overwhelming repeated choral refrains were perfectly balanced, poised on a knife edge between insanity and order.
Planet Hugill (May 2023)
Baritone Jack Holton’s Ben was warmly sung, and his pent-up frustration was totally believable
Seen and Heard (March 2022)
Jack Holton was an impressive Anckarstrom… emotionally the performance was fully developed. Rather impressively, 'Eri tu' was finely integrated into the performance rather than standing out as sometimes happens
Planet Hugill (June 2019)
Jack Holton embraced the onerous Anckarström role… His young baritone voice came across as rich and assured
Art Muse London (June 2019)
Jack Holton was a suave royal, stylishly donning the everyday dress in which he wants to be captured on camera, and singing with an elegance that did not hide his rather base amorous intentions.
Opera Today (June 2022)
notably strong performances come from Jack Holton as George Page
MusicOMH (August 2022)
