Recently described as "terrific" by Opera Now magazine, James Oldfield trained as a chorister at Leicester Cathedral. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2005, James spent a year as a Lay Clerk at St John's College, Cambridge. In September 2006 he became the Sir Thomas Allen Scholar at the Royal College of Music, was awarded the Eric Joseph Shilling Prize for Opera, and now holds the inaugural RCM Independent Opera Scholarship and a Sybil Tutton Award, administered by the Musicians Benevolent Fund. In March 2009 James will be Clito in the London Handel Festival's Alessandro, directed by William Relton, and in April will make his debut with Clonter Opera as Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte. In June James will take the roles of Bottom and Theseus in a production of Britten A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RCM, his last as a student.