Christine Botes was born in London and studied at Durham University, the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio.  She began her operatic career in the Glyndebourne Chorus, at the same time giving concerts and recitals as a prizewinner of the South East Arts Young Musicians' Platform.  She made her solo debut with the Royal Shakespeare Company as Ceres in The Tempest.

She worked extensively for Opera Factory at the Royal Court Theatre and the Queen Elizabeth Hall singing in La Calisto (Diana), The Knot Garden (Thea), Cosi fan Tutte (Dorabella),  Reimann's The Ghost Sonata (The Mummy) and performed in several music theatre pieces for OF including a staging of Ligeti's Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures and Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins (also filmed for Channel 4).

Prizes and scholarships include the Miriam Licette Scholarship for study in Paris and the Opera Prize at the s'Hertogenbosch International Singing Competition which led to engagements with  Jean-Claude Malgoire (L'Incoronazione di Poppea) and the Opera Comique (Ariadne auf Naxos).

She has worked for all the major British opera houses, singing in Die Zauberflote (Second Lady) and Iolanthe (Iolanthe) for Scottish Opera; Hansel and Gretel (Hansel), The Cunning Little Vixen (Fox) under Sir Charles Mackerras,  Figaro's Wedding (Cherubino), The Return of Ulysses (Minerva), Orfeo (Proserpina) and The Mikado (Pitti-Sing) for English National Opera; Ariadne auf Naxos (der Komponist) for Glyndebourne Festival Opera under Simon Rattle; Falstaff (Meg Page) for Glyndebourne Touring Opera; La Cenerentola (Tisbe) and Gotterdammerung (Flosshilde) under Sir Bernard Haitink for the Royal Opera House as well as performing in festivals and on tour with many other companies including Garsington Opera, Aldeburgh Festival, Edinburgh Festival,  Buxton Festival, English Touring Opera (Werther, The Turn of the Screw), Music Theatre Wales, Opera Theatre Company (Katya Kabanova), Pimlico Opera, Travelling Opera, Cambridge Handel Opera Group and Musica nel Chiostro at Batignano where she sang in the world premieres of Stephen Oliver's La Bella e la Bestia and Jonathan Dove's L'Augellino Belverde in addition to operas by Handel and Stradella.

Her orchestral concert engagements include performances of Elgar's Sea Pictures (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), The Music Makers (Dutch Handel Society), Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Messiah, Bach's Mass in B Minor (Hanover Band), the world premieres of Richard Blackford's Voices of Exile (Poole Arts Centre and Royal Festival Hall) and Benedict Mason's Chaplin Operas (Ensemble Modern), as well as concerts with the London Sinfonietta, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia and Bournemouth Sinfonia.  She has sung in many of the major UK concert halls - including the Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square, Birmingham Symphony Hall and London's South Bank - while abroad her concert engagements have taken her to France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland (Concertgebouw), Italy, Portugal, Poland and Russia.

Television broadcast performances include The Knot Garden, Cosi fan Tutte and Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures (all for Channel 4) and Voices of Exile (Meridian).

Her involvement in the opera world in an era when the profiles of producers and designers have come increasingly to the fore and audiences have become visually ever more sophisticated has led her to develop, under the title A Singer Prepares, a series of tutorials designed for singers who are not necessarily 'natural' performers on stage or those who are struggling with the acting demands of a particular role.

 © Christine Botes 2005

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