RANDALL SCOTTING
COUNTERTENOR
BIOGRAPHY
Countertenor Randall Scotting has quickly become a sought-after artist by many of the world’s leading opera houses and concert halls. He’s recently made standout debuts at The Royal Opera House, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Staatsoper Hamburg. Coming up, he’ll sing for the first time at La Fenice in Venice in the major role of Adonis in Sciarrino’s Venere e Adone, and he makes his Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah. March 2026 also brings the release of his next album on the Signum label with the Academy of Ancient Music and Laurence Cummings, The Divine Impresario, featuring virtuoso castrato arias.
Randall’s breakthrough came in 2019 at London’s Royal Opera House when he stepped in last-minute for Sir David McVicar’s production of Britten’s Death in Venice. His performance drew praise for “singing brilliantly,” and he went on to complete the run to sold-out houses, with the production also being broadcast on the BBC. That success led directly to his joining the Metropolitan Opera’s roster, and he’s since become a regular on the world’s top stages.
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Audiences and critics alike admire Randall for his dramatic intensity, musical sensitivity, and engaging stage
presence. His portrayal of the Refugee in Jonathan Dove’s Flight (Seattle Opera, 2021) drew glowing reviews—“marvelous,” “compelling,” “warm, focused, and fluid.” In 2023 he originated the role of Adonis in the world premiere of Sciarrino’s Venere e Adone at Staatsoper Hamburg with Kent Nagano, earning praise as “vocally and physically muscular,” “wonderfully strong and supple,” and “luminous.”
Randall is also making his mark as a recording artist. His 2022 debut solo album The Crown, recorded with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and conductor Laurence Cummings, introduced modern-day premieres of show-piece arias composed for the legendary castrato Senesino and he won international acclaim for “ravishing vocalism” and ““impressive beauty and warmth” tone. His follow-up, Lovesick with Grammy-winner and lutenist Stephen Stubbs, offered intimate lute and folk songs and drew glowing reviews from Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Limelight, which called it “gorgeous” and “beautifully sung”. “Most recently, Infinite Refrain with the Academy of Ancient Music explores 17th-century works by Monteverdi and his contemporaries through the lens of gay love, praised as both “vibrantly seductive” and “a strikingly beautiful declaration of same-sex love”.
Randall’s career has taken him to major US and European houses and venues: the Met, the Royal Opera House, Staatsoper Hamburg, Seattle Opera, Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Spoleto Festival, Pinchgut Opera, the Göttingen Handel Festival, and more. Concert appearances include Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, Edinburgh’s Saint Cecilia’s Hall, the Christchurch International Arts Festival, and Boston Baroque. He has also appeared on the BBC documentary Mozart’s London Odyssey, performing music by J.C. Bach and discussing the young Mozart. Favorite roles include Handel’s Rinaldo, Orlando, and Giulio Cesare; Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Cavalli’s Eliogabalo; and Gluck’s Orfeo.
Beyond the classical stage, Randall embraces a wide range of repertoire, from art song and new commissions to cabaret and crossover projects. He has appeared in staged productions of Xenakis’ The Oresteia, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King; improvised live with Bobby McFerrin at Carnegie Hall; and performed with the boundary-pushing troupe Company XIV, delivering virtuosic opera, folk, and pop numbers while strip-teasing in thigh-high platform stilettos.
Randall trained at the Royal College of Music in London, The Juilliard School in New York, and as a Fulbright
Scholar and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. He also holds a PhD in eighteenth-century Italian opera. Randall made his leading operatic debut at Spoleto’s Festival dei Due Mondi in Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte (available on DVD) with Il Complesso Barocco. Other recordings include the title role in Caldara’s Santo Stefano primo re dell’Ungheria and the modern cantata Dive: A Water Music for chorus and countertenor.
Current as of October 1, 2025
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
“…an athletic body and luminous singing…” – Ópera Actual (Spain)
Venere e Adone – “El contratenor Randall Scotting aportó un cuerpo atlético y un canto luminoso a su apropiadamente petulante Adone” [tr.] Countertenor Randall Scotting brought an athletic body and luminous singing to his appropriately smug Adone”
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"…ravishing vocalism…" - BBC Music Magazine (United Kingdom)
The Crown, Heroic Arias for Senesino – “★★★★ In this debut solo album, countertenor Randall Scotting lets loose a ravishing vocalism… Scotting applies deep colours, muscular core, and baritonal chest register to probe a huge range of feelings. In bravura numbers he pushes tempos to fever pitch, egging the other performers on, often through thrilling roulades. On slower tracks, Scotting’s messa da voce is mesmerising in music about love and despair alike. Scotting’s sensational 2019 Covent Garden debut showed off his superb acting, and this recording captures his dramatic artistry.”
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"… full, darkly mellifluous voice…" - Gramophone, United Kingdom
The Crown, Heroic Arias for Senesino – “Scotting’s full, darkly mellifluous voice – smooth and even throughout its range, with a resonant lower register – is well suited to these elegies, meditations and amorous outpourings… [He] shapes each aria with a feeling for the character’s predicament.”
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“…vocally and physically muscular…” – The New Yorker
Venere e Adone – “Randall Scotting is a vocally and physically muscular Adonis.”
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"… impressively even and agile, with a warm, natural vibrato and beguiling timbre…” – Limelight (Australia)
The Crown, Heroic Arias for Senesino – “★★★★ [Scotting’s] impressively even and agile instrument, with its warm, natural vibrato and particularly beguiling timbre in the lower range. Here, as indeed throughout the program, Scotting’s cadenzas and da capo ornaments are, like the man, both confident and stylish… If charismatically sung baroque opera arias are your thing, Randall Scotting is your man.”
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"… Not only beautifully sung, but “lived…" - Opera Charm Magazine
Lovesick, songs on heartbreak and solitude – “Not only beautifully sung, but “lived” by Scotting… The expressivity of his vocal inflections is of an august individuality. There is a genuineness which makes the listener’s perception of melancholy ever so present and visceral… He sings passionately, immersing the listener… Lovesick is an album that will stir up any music lover’s sense of emotion, and it will carry them through a whirlwind of feelings”
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"...Scotting is marvelous... compelling actor..." – Musical America
Flight – “American countertenor Randall Scotting is marvelous as the Refugee, his plangent, rich-toned instrument possessing just the right degree of otherworldliness to suggest his mysterious origins and the complexities of his unique dilemma. He’s a compelling actor as well, which ensures that his final aria and its dramatic reveal (no spoilers) lands with due pathos.”
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"...sung brilliantly..." – Le Salon Musical
Death in Venice – “Apollo è cantato brillantemente dal controtenore Randall Scotting.” |tr| “Apollo is sung brilliantly by countertenor Randall Scotting.”
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"...there can surely only be a handful of singers on the planet that can carry this off..." – The Christchurch Mail
Oresteia – “Scotting was absolutely amazing, commanding the stage for two long periods of demanding extremes […] There can surely only be a handful of singers on the planet that can carry this off and with his strong physical presence he really was remarkable.”
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"...his vocal choices are imaginative and always stylish..." – Limelight Magazine
Orlando – “Randall Scotting’s Orlando is highly watchable. He delivers a most convincing dramatic and musical performance… his vocal choices are imaginative and always stylish – ‘Fammi combattere’ is terrifically decorated – and he grows in intensity as the evening progresses, delivering an excellent mad scene.”
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"...he made it feel like a showpiece, as though we’ve been listening to it forever…" – Allegri con fuoco
Rinaldo – “Randall Scotting in the role of Rinaldo lent this aria [“Cara sposa, amante cara”] an emotionality that burst out into the space and pushed against the ceiling. Imbuing it with the confidence of familiarity, he made it feel like a showpiece, as though we’ve been listening to it forever… Scotting showed that it was his night. He really shined as Rinaldo.”
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"...a very clear, sweet tone that captivates the audience..." – TheaterJones
Giulio Cesare – “Scotting handles the complex technical demands of the music well, but his greatest strength lies in his intensely lyrical musical ability. He has a very clear, sweet tone that captivates the audience in many of his arias… he exudes the idea of a man’s man – a masculine hero who makes women swoon… the performances are world class.”