Benjamin Hulett

Tenor Benjamin Hulett stepped out of a period at the Hamburg Staatsoper to launch a prominent trajectory through opera and concert repertoire during the 2010s, appearing at leading theaters alongside foremost conductors. His body of recorded work, focused chiefly on choral repertoire, has grown considerably.

Hulett first gained footing in music as a choral scholar at New College, Oxford, one of Britain’s historic university cathedrals. From there he pursued operatic training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London before securing a position in the Hamburg Staatsoper ensemble between 2005 and 2009. During those years he took on an array of parts that included Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and the Novice in Britten’s Billy Budd. Additional debuts followed in theaters across German- and English-speaking countries, and by the middle of the following decade his stage credits encompassed Hippolyt in Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra at the Berliner Staatsoper and the title character in J.C. Bach’s Lucio Silla at the Salzburg Mozartwochen. Concert appearances have taken him to Wigmore Hall as well as to the Aldeburgh, Buxton, and Oxford Lieder festivals, where demand for his work in art song has continued to rise.

Although his discography spans little more than ten years, it already reflects notable breadth. After issuing two song programs in 2009 and 2010—Visions Fugitives with the group 440 Hz and Departures alongside pianist Alexander Soddy—Hulett moved to Naxos to record the seldom-heard sonnet settings by eighteenth-century composer Maurice Greene based on Edmund Spenser, supported only by harpsichord and theorbo. Further releases appeared on the Stone and Guild imprints, reinforcing his standing among the most adaptable young tenors. In 2018 he joined the Early Opera Company for a Chandos account of Handel’s Acis and Galatea; two years later he performed with the FestspielOrchester Göttingen on an Accent release of the composer’s oratorio Saul, HWV 53. He reappeared on Signum Classics in 2023, serving as soloist with The Wimbledon Choral Society in Cecilia McDowall’s Da Vinci Requiem.