Peter Lockwood, vocal coach, assistant conductor and repetiteur, is one of New Zealand’s highest ranking music professionals working in Europe at this time, and is currently the Acting Associate Director and Guest Coach at TANZOS (The Aotearoa New Zealand Opera Studio)

Born in Wellington, he went on to study in London at the Royal College of Music and the National Opera Studio. He then was appointed to the music staff of Scottish Opera in Glasgow (1982) and then to Belgian National Opera in Brussels (1983) before joining the music staff of Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam in 1993; he has worked with a who’s who of singers, conductors and stage directors of the opera world for more than forty years.

His repertoire includes more than two hundred operas, including the major works of Wagner, Mozart, Verdi and Puccini as well as of Janácek, Richard Strauss, Poulenc and the Italian bel canto school.

He appears regularly as accompanist on the concert platform and on European radio and television and also gives master classes for young singers and repetiteurs in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Great Britain and the United States. He has also been a jury member for vocal competitions and conservatory examinations in New Zealand (NZ Aria), Holland, Belgium, Germany and Albania.

His recordings include two CDs of transcriptions of operatic excerpts for two pianos (Opera 4 Hands Vols. 1 & 2) with Julian Reynolds and a CD of Saint-Saëns’ Le Carnaval des Animaux in its original version for two pianos and chamber ensemble as well as a CD of songs by Finzi, Vaughan Williams and Britten (Oh Fair To See) with tenor Donald Kaasch.

He is directly involved with Dutch National Opera’s Young Artist Programme and has also mentored young New Zealand singers in collaboration with the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.