European Nightingale

Featuring internationally acclaimed New Zealand violinist Olivia Rose Francis
with
Rachael Griffiths-Hughes
Francis Cowan

A captivating afternoon of music by European composers from seven countries, concluding with The Victorious Nightingale.

Koha Entry
No booking required.

All proceeds in support of St Peter’s Cathedral strengthening and restoration project.

Olivia Rose Francis was born in New Zealand in 1991 and began playing the violin at the age of seven through the Suzuki method. She studied with Profs. Dimitri Atanassov at the University of Auckland, Berent Korfker at the Royal College of Music London, and Nora Chastain at the Zurich University of the Arts. As a teenager she developed a passion for orchestral playing, serving as concertmaster of the New Zealand National Youth Orchestra and the Auckland Youth Orchestra, and was a member of the 2016 Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra and the 2017-18 Verbier Festival Orchestra. In recent years she has gained valuable experience and treasured memories in opera, ballet and symphonic repertoire in the Badische Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Philharmonia Zurich, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, and Estonian Festival Orchestra.

Olivia is also an enthusiastic Baroque violinist. She studied Historical Performance at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg with Professor Pauline Nobes and performs with the Dresden Festival Orchestra. Olivia was a prize winner at the 2021 International H.I.F Biber Competition in St. Florian, Austria and performed a baroque recital in the Schubert-Saal of the Wiener Konzerthaus which was broadcast on ORF (Austrian Broadcasting).

For the past four years Olivia was a member of the second violins in the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra. She has now embarked on a new path and began as assistant principal of the second violins at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen in 2026.