Baritone Mark Stone was born in London and studied Mathematics at King's College, Cambridge, and singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1998 he was awarded the Decca Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards. Recent operatic engagements include his first foray into Wagner roles last season with acclaimed role debuts as Gunther in Götterdämmerung at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Alberich (Das Rheingold) at the Longborough Festival and Wotan (Die Walküre) with Trondheim Opera. He also sang Marcello (La Bohème) for the Copenhagen Opera Festival, Papageno (Die Zauberflöte) with Welsh National Opera and Valencia Palau de les Arts; Balstrode (Peter Grimes) at Opera Queensland, Australia; the King in George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence at the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg and a return to the Opera Philadelphia for Protector in George Benjamin's Written on Skin. Highlights of the 21/22 season include Wotan (Die Walküre) for the Grimeborn Opera Festival (for which he won the 2022 Offie Award for Best Opera Performance), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly) for Welsh National Opera, Alberich (Siegfried) for Longborough Festival Opera, his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic singing Thomas Adès's Totentanz, and Rene Gallimard in the world première of Huang Ruo's M. Butterfly for Santa Fe Opera.