Born in Hamilton, the mezzo-soprano Clare Shearer studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and was the first recipient of an English Speaking Union Scholarship to study at the Banff Centre in Canada. Among others, she has sung Mary (Der fliegende Holländer), Grimgerde and Siegrune (Der Ring des Nibelungen), Wowkle (La fanciulla del West), Albine (Thaïs) and Sosostris (The Midsummer Marriage) with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden; Siegrune, Mary Wollstonecraft (Sally Beamish’s Monster),Flora (La traviata), Mercedès (Carmen), Olga (Eugene Onegin), Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), Preziosilla (La forza del destino) and Dorabella (Così fan tutte) at Scottish Opera; Fenena (Nabucco), Lola (Cavalleria rusticana) and Carmen at Welsh National Opera; Mercedès and Rosina
(The Barber of Seville) with Opera North;
and Dorabella and Suzuki (Madam Butterfly) with English National Opera. In the course of a prominent concert and recital career, Clare Shearer has appeared at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh and Wigmore Hall, London, performed in gala concerts with Dennis O’Neill and Montserrat Caballé, and sung Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder and Brahms’s Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91 with the Scottish Ballet, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Verdi’s Requiem at the Montreux Festival, in Geneva and in Le Sentier.