City Music graduate Dionysios Kyropoulos has been awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians Prize for his outstanding undergraduate final-year Major Project entitled ‘Rhetoric, Affekt and Gesture in Handelian Opera: Towards a holistic approach to historically informed performance’.

After his recent graduation, Dionysios performed the role of Uberto in Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona in Stuttgart, Germany, followed by the roles of Masetto and Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Thames Philharmonia conducted by Byung-Yun Yu. He created the role of the Whale in Danyal Dhondy’s new opera Just So, premiered at the 2012 Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival, and he also participated in the British Youth Opera production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride in which he sang in the chorus and understudied the role of Mícha.

Dionysios, who graduated with a first-class BMus(Hons) degree, frequently gives talks about historical stagecraft at the Handel House Museum. This academic year he is back at City University London as the tutor of the City Opera Ensemble, where he offers undergraduate music students theoretical and practical training in operatic performance in his capacity as music and stage director. He is using this opportunity to experiment with period stagecraft and further develop his academic research. Next year he will be studying for the MPhil in Music Studies at the University of Cambridge.

He has continued his association with the Historical Performance Department at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and recently sung the role of Father Time in The Masque of Time, devised by Andrew Lawrence-King and directed by Victoria Newlyn. A revival of this production is scheduled for 26 March in St Stephen Walbrook. Dionysios is currently preparing to sing in Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri, Handel’s Atalanta with Cambridge Handel Opera and Holst’s Wandering Scholar with Opéra les Fauves.

For Dionysios’s biography, news and upcoming concerts, please visit his website www.kyropoulos.com.