Fiona Kimm

Last updated

Fiona Kimm is a British mezzo-soprano known for a wide-ranging operatic and concert repertoire.

Contents

Education and early career

She studied at the Royal College of Music [1] with Meriel St Clair, and at the National Opera Studio in its inaugural year. [2]

She made her operatic debut as Irene in "Tamerlano" for Musica Nel Chiostro at the Riverside Studios. Her Glyndebourne debut in 1978 was as 3rd Lady in Die Zauberflöte (in Southern Television's broadcast) and she was given the John Christie Award that year. She joined English National Opera North in 1979, making her debut as Hansel. She appeared with ENO as Fyodor in Boris Godunov in 1980, a role she repeated with the Royal Opera House in 1983. [3]

Operatic roles

UK

For Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Companies, she has sung 3rd Lady (debut), Celia (La Fedeltà Premiata), Sméraldine (L'Amour des Trois Oranges), Maman/Chatte (L'Enfant et les Sortilèges), Baba the Turk (The Rake's Progress), Sesto (La Clemenza di Tito) and Mme Larina (Eugene Onegin).

For English National Opera, roles include Fyodor, Siebel (Faust), Kitchen Boy (Rusalka), Sonya (War and Peace), Diana (Orpheus in the Underworld), Frou-Frou (La Belle Vivette) and Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus).

For Opera North, roles include Hansel (debut), Mercedes(Carmen), Rosalind (The Mines of Sulphur), Nicklaus (The Tales of Hoffmann), Julie (Showboat), Olga (Eugene Onegin), Baba the Turk and Maman/Tasse Chinoise/Libellule (L'Enfant et les Sortileges).

For Scottish Opera, roles include Clori (L'Egisto)(debut), Schoolboy (Lulu), Olga, Flosshilde (Das Rheingold), Meg (Falstaff), Marcellina (Figaro's Wedding) and Mrs Chin (A Night at the Chinese Opera). [4]

For the Royal Opera House, she has sung Fyodor, Baronne (Chérubin), Comtesse de Coigny (Andrea Chenier), Herodias's Page (Salome).

For English Touring Opera, she has sung Jezibaba (Rusalka) [5] and Kabanicha (Katya Kabanova). [6]

For Garsington Festival Opera she has sung Clairon (Capriccio) and Mistress Quickly (Falstaff) .

She has performed Fricka (Das Rheingold and Die Walküre) for Longborough Festival Opera. [7]

She sang Rosa Mamai (L'Arlesiana) for Holland Park in the British professional premiere of Cilea’s opera.

She sang Azucena (Il Trovatore) for Stowe Opera.

International

Her roles include Mme Arvidson (Un Ballo in Maschera) for Canadian Opera Company, Mrs Sedley (Peter Grimes) for Frankfurt Opera, The Nurse (Boris Godunov) and Jane's Mother (Snow White) for the Nationale Reisopera, Nancy (Albert Herring) and Electra (Visitations) for Opera Decentralisee and Ursule (Béatrice et Bénédict) for the Berlioz Festival in Lyon.

Amongst the conductors with whom she has sung are Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Edward Downes, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Mark Elder, Andrew Davis, Jacques Delacote, Nicola Luisotti and Vasily Petrenko.

Concert repertoire

She has a wide-ranging concert and oratorio repertoire and has performed the major works in the UK and internationally. Performances include Margret (Wozzeck) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kindertotenlieder with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, The Dream of Gerontius with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, appearances at the 3 Choirs Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Proms and Huddersfield Festival, including Alfred Shnittke's Seid Wacht und Nuchtern, Stravinsky's Les Noces and Britten's Spring Symphony, the Verdi Requiem in Madrid and Vilnius, Luciano Berio's Folk Songs with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Henze's Voices with the London Sinfonietta.

Contemporary music

She is widely recognized for her dynamic performances of contemporary music, and has created roles in a number of world premieres, including Wife (Greek), Auntirosa (Baa-Baa Black Sheep), Markolfa (The Nightingale's to Blame) and Ma (House of the Gods), [8] as well as having several new works written specifically for her, including Gary Carpenter's "For Remembrance" and "The One Alone", with words by Dame Iris Murdoch, Edward Cowie’s "Kate Kelly’s Road Show" and Turnage’s "Songs From Greek". She has performed with top contemporary ensembles including London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Asko, Nash Ensemble and Lontano.

Discography and video

Her recordings include Lament for a Hanging Man by Mark Antony Turnage, Canciones by Simon Holt, Street Scene by Kurt Weill, L'Enfance du Christ by Berlioz and Beatrice Cenci by Berthold Goldschmidt. [9] Her recital CD, In Flanders Fields, is the first in a projected series focusing on Music and Conflict, and was the culmination of intensive research into the music and poetry of the First World War and the resulting Wigmore Hall recital with pianist Andrew Ball.

Her television and video appearances include Rusalka, L'Enfant et les Sortileges, Salome, Greek and Baa Baa Black Sheep. [10]

Related Research Articles

<i>Lenfant et les sortilèges</i> Opera by Maurice Ravel

L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first being L'heure espagnole. Written from 1917 to 1925, L'enfant et les sortilèges was first performed in Monte Carlo in 1925 conducted by Victor de Sabata.

Rinat Shaham is an Israeli born mezzo-soprano who has received numerous accolades for her international operatic, concert and recital performances.

Helga Dernesch is an Austrian soprano and mezzo-soprano. Her career has taken her through four successive phases: from mezzo-soprano to lyric soprano to dramatic soprano, and after about 1980 back to mezzo again. "Her voice had great richness and power, and her strikingly handsome stage appearance and intense acting made her a compelling performer."

René Pape German operatic bass singer

René Pape is a German operatic bass. Pape has received two Grammys, was named “Vocalist of the Year” by Musical America in 2002, “Artist of the Year” by the German opera critics in 2006, and won an ECHO award in 2009.

Cheryl Barker Australian operatic soprano

Cheryl Ruth Barker is an Australian operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the late 1980s. She has sung on several complete opera recordings with Chandos Records, including the title roles in Dvořák's Rusalka, Janáček's Káťa Kabanová and Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Emilia Marty in Janáček's The Makropulos Case. She has also made two solo recordings of opera arias, one with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor David Parry and the other with Orchestra Victoria and conductor Richard Bonynge. On the stage she has had partnerships with the English National Opera (ENO) and Opera Australia.

Florence Quivar is an American operatic mezzo-soprano who is considered to be "one of the most prominent singers of her generation." She has variously been described as having a "rich, earthy sound and communicative presence" as "always reliable" and as "a distinguished singer, with a warm, rich voice and a dignified performing presence." From 1977-1997 she was a regular performer at the Metropolitan Opera where she gave more than 100 performances.

Anna Justine Steiger is a British and American opera singer who has sung leading soprano and mezzo-soprano roles in British, European and North American opera houses. She has sung many recitals at festivals which have been broadcast live on the BBC, Radio France and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2010, she was invited to participate in the Australian Chamber Music Festival. She is still active as a recitalist and opera singer. She also has a year one Master in Food History from the University François Rabelais de Tours, France.

Sarah Connolly English mezzo-soprano

Dame Sarah Patricia Connolly is an English mezzo-soprano. Although best known for her baroque and classical roles, Connolly has a wide-ranging repertoire which has included works by Wagner as well as various 20th-century composers. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music.

Sarah Fox is an English operatic soprano who has performed at several of the world's leading opera houses, notably the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

Kateřina Jalovcová Czech operatic mezzo-soprano (born 1978)

Kateřina Jalovcová is a Czech operatic mezzo-soprano who has had an active international career since 2004. She is a principal singer at the National Theatre in Prague.

Youngok Shin is a South Korean lyric coloratura soprano known for her interpretations of the bel canto repertoire.

Kate Lindsey American opera singer

Kate Lindsey is a mezzo-soprano opera singer from the United States. She is married to the documentary filmmaker Olly Lambert.

Gwynne Geyer is an American operatic soprano. A graduate of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, she has sung leading roles at major opera houses all over the Western world, including La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. She played the role of Nedda in Pagliacci for the New York City Opera in 1992.

Wendy White is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active international singing career in operas and concerts since the late 1970s. She has performed annually with the Metropolitan Opera since her debut with the company in 1989, and as of April 2011 has appeared in a total of 499 performances at the Met.

Stefan Szkafarowsky American opera singer (born 1956)

Stefan Szkafarowsky is an American opera singer (bass).

Tove Dahlberg Swedish opera singer

Hanna Tove Dahlberg is a Swedish mezzo-soprano opera singer, active on the international opera scene. In 2005 Dahlberg was one of a group of world-class musicians who were permitted to perform inside a building at Auschwitz for the first time ever during the filming of the International Emmy Award winning TV documentary Holocaust: A Music Memorial Film.

Susan Davenny Wyner is a nationally-acclaimed American conductor based in Massachusetts. Davenny Wyner had a promising career as a soprano, which was ended by an automobile/bicycling accident that damaged her vocal cords.

Alison Hagley is an English opera singer.

Elliot Madore Canadian opera singer

Elliot Madore is a Canadian lyric baritone with an international operatic career.

Dina Kuznetsova is an American lyric dramatic operatic soprano of Russian descent who has appeared in leading roles on the stages of international opera houses from New York to Sydney. She has focused on Italian and Slavic repertoires. Her signature roles include Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly by Puccini, the title role in Dvořák's Rusalka, and Kátya in Kátya Kabanová by Janáček.

References

  1. ↑ "Archived copy". www.rcm.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 8 November 2011. Retrieved 17 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ↑ "Alumni". National Opera Studio.
  3. ↑ Sadie, Stanley (ed) New Grove Dictionary of Opera Oxford University Press, 2004
  4. ↑ Walker, Lynne The Independent 18 April 2008
  5. ↑ Millington, Barry Evening Standard 14 October 2008
  6. ↑ Elleson, Ruth Opera Today 24 March 2009
  7. ↑ Kennedy, Michael Sunday Telegraph July 1999
  8. ↑ Picard, Anna Independent on Sunday 8 October 2006
  9. ↑ Buell, Richard The Boston Globe 15 August 1995
  10. ↑ American Record Guide 1 July 2004
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.