Harry Sever
BBC Music Magazine ‘Rising Star’ conductor Harry Sever studied at Oxford University and trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Royal Academy of Music. A finalist in both the LSO’s Donatella Flick and the Athens International Conducting Competitions, recent and upcoming engagements include Siegfried (Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester / Den Ny Opera), Carmen (Opera North), The Fairy Queen (Longborough Festival Opera), Fantasio (Garsington), La Traviata (Opera Holland Park), concerts with the orchestra of Welsh National Opera and recordings with the orchestra of Opera North.
A composer for stage and screen, Harry’s shows Mr Men & Little Miss, James and the Giant Peach and Guess How Much I Love You have toured internationally. For the theatre, scores include The Kreutzer Sonata (Arcola Theatre), Sleeping Beauty and My Mother Said I Never Should (The Theatre Chipping Norton), King Lear, As You Like It, Love’s Labours Lost (The Minack Theatre), and for screen, Stalker (CBS). Harry is regularly in demand as an arranger and conductor for session and film recording. Recent credits include Rossum’s Universal Robots (BBC Radio 4).
He is currently the Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow at Longborough Festival Opera, conducting performances of Siegfried & Die Walküre and worked on their complete cycle in 2024. He is also music director of the Cambridge Philharmonic. He is working now with Opera North on a new production for children, The Big Opera Adventure and returns to ENO in 2025/26. In 2026 and 2027 he will conduct Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at Grange Park Opera in the first operas of their complete Ring Cycle.
As an assistant conductor and member of music staff, Harry has worked with English National Opera, the Royal Danish Opera, Den Jyske Opera (Danish National Opera), Garsington, Opera Holland Park, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the Grange Festival, and the Britten Sinfonia at Sadler’s Wells. His education work has included projects with The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, The Royal Opera Academy, Copenhagen, British Youth Opera, Birmingham Conservatoire and Trinity Laban Conservatoire.
“An urgent but sensitively calibrated pulse ran through his interpretation… a fine sense for weighting, shared with the City of London Sinfonia”
Opera Magazine
“The orchestra was on as thriving form as I can remember – largely due to conductor Harry Sever’s visibly expressive control and illuminating pacing.”
Opera Now
“Harry Sever draws a generally enlivened account of the score that sustains the narrative within the stretches of music among the dialogue. A vibrant and witty interpretation of an operatic rarity.”
Classical Source