Marienella Phillips, British-Filipino mezzo-soprano, made her Welsh National Opera debut as Mrs Charlton in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (2019) conducted by Karen Kamensek and directed by Martin Constantine. With the pandemic’s impact on the arts, Marienella is grateful to have been involved in various socially distanced productions through the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama including Dido in Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas and Lady Ashbrook in Coram Boy by Jasper Dommett, both directed by Fleur Snow and conducted by Stefano Boccacci. In 2020 she graduated from the David Seligman Opera Studio where she was taught by Anne Mason and coached by John Fisher and Stephen Wood. There she won the Adelina Patti and Dolan Evans Prizes. In June this year, she was a finalist for the RWCMD Sir Ian Stoutzker Prize and played Hansel for Longborough Festival Opera’s Playground Opera Tour of Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck, directed by Maria Jagusz and conducted by Jessica May.

On the concert platform, she performed Dorabella in excerpts from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte with the WNO Orchestra conducted by Carlo Rizzi for the RWCMD Winter Opera Gala 2019. That year she won the Adelina Patti and Dolan Evans Prizes. She regularly performs around Cardiff, South West and South East England as a soloist and guest artist with various choirs.

In 2020 she graduated from the RWCMD David Seligman Opera School, following the completion of her Master’s in performance at the college. There she was taught by Anne Mason and coached by John Fisher and Stephen Wood. She is a grateful recipient of The Leverhulme Trust Scholarship, Jenkins Phillips Scholarship and Peter and Janet Swinburn Scholarship in support of her studies.

Previous operatic roles include: Dido (Dido & Aeneas, RWCMD), Dorabella (Cosi fan tutte, RWCMD), Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro, Somerset Opera), Zerlina (Don Giovanni, Cardiff Opera), Second Lady (Serenata Singers, Cardiff), Tessa (The Gondoliers, RWCMD), Nancy Waters (Albert Herring, RWCMD), Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio, RWCMD), Second Boy (The Magic Flute, RWCMD) and Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus, Opera’r Ddraig).

While at the RWCMD, she was Assistant Director to Martin Constantine for Weil’s Street Scene at The Sherman Theatre Cardiff (2017), conducted by Wyn Davies; and Director for Sir Walter Scott in Music and Opera with Black Bird Opera and the Scottish Ensemble for the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival (2018). Future directorial projects to be announced…

It was during her time at the University of Bristol that Marienella first found opera and a passion for directing. In 2016 she graduated from the University of Bristol with a Master’s and Bachelor's with Honours in music. There she focussed on musicology, electronic composition and performance while studying with Angela Hickey and Patricia Rozario OBE. In 2015, she directed Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro with Bristol Operatic Society and theatre productions including S27 by Sarah Grochala (Co-Director, Bristol Drama) and I, Lucifer by Glenn Duncan (Co-Director, Bristol Falstaff Society).

Alongside her work in music, Marienella teaches drama with Stagecoach Weston-Super-Mare and is developing her LAMDA Exam Practice, working with students to prepare them for performance exams in Acting (monologue or duologue) and Communication (Speaking Verse and Prose, Public Speaking and Reading for Performance).

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