Dr Flora Willson is one of the UK’s leading classical music writers and broadcasters.
Flora writes reviews and features as one of the Guardian’s classical music critics as well as contributing regularly to other publications. She has 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, London Symphony Orchestra, Opera Rara, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Ballet & Opera and Southbank Centre.
Until 2025, Flora also worked as an academic musicologist, teaching and researching the cultural history of 19th-century music. Initially a Junior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge, she then worked for over a decade at King’s College London, first as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and subsequently as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Music. She has published articles in most major musicology journals and her academic book Operatic Infrastructures: Materiality and Meaning in 1890s London, Paris, and New York was published by University of Chicago Press in May 2026.
Flora is one of the Guardian’s classical music writers and she contributes regularly to Gramophone, Opera Now and the Times Literary Supplement.
Her writing has also appeared in publications including The Daily Telegraph, Observer, Opera magazine and V&A Magazine, as well as in numerous opera programme books. 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.
Flora’s criticism for the Guardian has ranged from covering the Bayreuth Festival’s controversial “AI Ring” to a marathon rarity by Morton Feldman and the Coronation of King Charles III and from the opening of the Aldeburgh Festival to the Last Night of the Proms. She has covered performances by many of the world’s leading orchestras, singers and instrumentalists but has also been delighted to review more community-centred concerts and performances by young musicians and rising stars.
Flora’s features include interviews with contemporary composers such as Steve Reich and Mark-Anthony Turnage and musicians including Barbara Hannigan and Davóne Tines. Flora has also written about subjects from the world’s biggest string quartet festival and being a first-timer at Bayreuth to the Black Dyke Band, the undying popularity of Puccini’s Tosca 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, she loves 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 Review, Opera on 3 and live broadcasts from the BBC Proms. 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 (including this discussion of a new adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus) and Add to Playlist.
Flora’s BBC TV appearances include 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 performances 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.