Biography
 

An Anglo-Swedish Society scholar Mae Heydorn studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Graduating with distinction she made her operatic debut with Glyndebourne Festival Opera as Woodpecker in The Cunning Little Vixen. 

 

This season Mae Heydorn is singing the title role in Café Europa, a new chamber opera by Christoph Renhart to be premiered at the Festival de Ópera de Óbidos in Portugal. 

Other contemporary  performances include the world premiere of Opera Mums with Bryony Kimmings streamed on BBC4 and Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus at English National Opera.

 

In 2021 the UK premiere of Gounod’s La Nonne Sanglante earned her an Offie nomination for best performance in the title role and an Offie Award for best opera production. 

‘Mae Heydorn was the star turn as the nun.’ Opera Now

 

Mae is the winner of the Swedish Wagner Award 2019 and has since sung her critically acclaimed role debut as Erda in director Amy Lane’s Ring Cycle at Longborough Festival Opera and later in the critically praised Regents Opera Ring Cycle with Ben Woodward at the helm.

‘A gorgeously sung Erda from Mae Heydorn’ The Guardian

 

In 2023 Mae sang Handel at Sotheby’s as part of Oliver Zeffman’s Barbican Classical Pride. 

She understudied Bianca in The Rape of Lucretia & Mrs Grose in The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne and continues her love of performing Britten’s music most recently as Auntie in Peter Grimes at the Southbank Centre and Mrs Grose in Jonny Danciger‘s much acclaimed production with Cumbria Opera Group.

 

A Making Music Philip and Dorothy Green Award winner Mae performs in recital across the UK with the English Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, at St John’s Smith Square, the Oxford International Song Festival (formerly Oxford Lieder) and Music at Oxford.

 

2025 saw her Carmen role debut "Mae Heydorn's Carmen was magnetic, charismatic, and at times quite frighteningly bewitching, her velvety voice weaved seduction and danger into every phrase."

Scene and Herd.

 

Later in the season Mae is singing in the rarely performed Die Rheinnixen by Offenbach at the Battersea Arts Centre, Mahler’s Symphony No 2 at Blackheath Halls and Herodias in Regents Opera‘s new production of Salome in London.