Oscar Verhaar is a countertenor, or altus if you like, who is currently a Master student of Peter Kooij, Jill Feldman and Michael Chance at the Early Music department of the Royal Conservatory in
The Hague. In August 2010 Oscar won the first prize of the Austria Barock Akademie
He was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 1987. As a member of the Rotterdam Boys Choir he performed many times as choral
singer and as soloist both in The Netherlands and in international tours across USA, Russia and throughout Europe. In 1998 Oscar started singing
lessons, first with Hilary Reynolds and later with Geert van den Dungen. At the age of fifteen
he recorded a solo-cd with works by Purcell, Händel, Bach, Vivaldi and Haydn.
Oscar Verhaar is regularly engaged as a soloist. He has
already sung most of the major sacred repertoire by Bach, Vivaldi, Händel (The Messiah), Pergolesi (Stabat Mater) and Monteverdi (Marian Vespers).
On the opera stage he has performed in Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, Venus and Adonis by Blow and Abraham and Isaac by Britten (Dutch Chamber-Opera Festival 2005).
Oscar also was the soloist in 2004-2005 in a series of performances of the successful theatre cycle 'Op zoek naar de verloren tijd' (In Search of
Lost Time) after Marcel Proust, in which he performed music by Bach and Poulenc. This production toured among other cities to
Amsterdam (Holland Festival), Berlin (Berliner Festspiele), Brussels (Festival des Arts) and Vienna (Wiener Festwochen).
