Dr Flora Willson is one of the UK’s leading classical music writers and broadcasters.
Flora writes regular reviews and features as one of the Guardian’s classical music critics and also contributes to publications including the Gramophone, Times Literary Supplement and V&A Magazine. She has also appeared frequently on BBC Radio 3 and 4 for over a decade, as well as featuring in BBC TV documentaries and live cinema relays from the Royal Opera House. As a presenter and speaker, Flora has worked on and off camera with numerous organisations including BBC Proms, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Opera Rara, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Oxford International Song Festival, Royal Ballet & Opera and Southbank Centre.
Until 2025, Flora worked as an academic musicologist, teaching and researching the cultural history of 19th-century music – initially as a Junior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge (2012-15), then as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and subsequently Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the Music Department at King’s College London. Her academic book Operatic Infrastructures: Materiality and Meaning in 1890s London, Paris, and New York will be published by University of Chicago Press in 2026.
Flora is one of the Guardian’s classical music writers and she contributes regularly to the Times Literary Supplement and Gramophone. Her writing has also appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, Opera magazine and the V&A Magazine. Flora is always interested in stories connected to the cultural history of music, but also loves exploring quirky, unexpected, challenging or overlooked aspects of classical music today.
Highlights of Flora’s criticism for the Guardian include reviewing the Last Night of the Proms, the Coronation of King Charles III, Keith Warner’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle at Royal Opera House and the opening of the Aldeburgh Festival. She has covered performances by many of the world’s most famous orchestras, singers and instrumentalists but has also been delighted to review performances by young musicians, rising stars and London’s LGBTQ+ vocal ensemble The Fourth Choir.
Flora’s features have ranged from interviews with major contemporary composers such as Mark-Antony Turnage and Anna Thorvaldsdottir to articles about the world’s biggest string quartet festival, the Black Dyke Band and the eternal question of whether anyone really can sing. She has even reported from Wembley.
Flora is an energetic, experienced broadcaster known for her enthusiastic, no-nonsense attitude to classical music and her love of communicating complex ideas in an accessible way.
She has appeared regularly on BBC Radio since 2013. She is a frequent guest on Radio 3’s Record Reviewand Opera on 3 and has also been interviewed on Music Matters. Her presenting on Radio 3 includes two audio documentaries broadcast as Sunday Features – Opera Across the Waves (2017) and Aida at 150 (2021) – as well as numerous editions of Opera on 3. She has also appeared as a guest on Radio 4’s Front Row(most recently discussing Puccini’s legacy) and Add to Playlist.
On BBC TV, Flora has appeared in Queen Victoria: My Musical Britain (BBC2, 2019) and Mozart: Rise of a Genius (BBC2, 2024).
Flora wrote and presented the eight-part series Unmissable Opera for Royal Opera & Ballet Stream (2024). She also appears on cinema relays and hosts livestreamed insights events from the Royal Opera, as well as presenting livestreamed events and hosting a podcast, Lives in Song, for award-winning record label Opera Rara.
Flora is passionate about communicating effectively with audiences about complex or challenging topics and enjoys providing consultancy on exhibitions, publications and live events.
Flora’s experience as a consultant ranges from working with learning teams in major arts organisations to film producers and from opera directors to academics developing new “Impact” projects alongside their research. If you’re working on a project connected to classical music, opera, or academic research in the arts and humanities and would like support in developing your narrative or putting it across to particular audiences, she’d love to hear from you.