Susannah Waters

Last updated

Susannah Waters
Born
Maidstone, Kent, England, UK
Education Bennington College
Alma mater Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Occupation(s)Singer, writer and director
Years active1990–present
SpouseFederay Holmes[ citation needed ]
Relatives Mark Rylance (brother)

Susannah Waters is a British writer and director. Born in Kent, England, she attended both Bennington College in America and the Guildhall School of Music, in London, as well as the National Opera Studio.

Actor Mark Rylance [1] is one of her brothers. For twelve years, she worked as an opera singer, performing principal roles in many of the world's leading opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera Festival, LA Opera, Seattle Opera, Théâtre du Châtelet, and Royal Swedish Opera.

In 2002, she left singing to become a writer and stage director. Her first novel, Long Gone Anybody, was published by Black Swan in 2004, and short-listed for the Pendleton May Award and Geoffrey Faber Award. [2] Her second novel, Cold Comfort, published by Black Swan in 2006, featured on Radio 4’s Today programme as one of the first fictional novels dealing with the effects of climate change. She is currently[ when? ] completing her third. She was an Associate Tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Sussex, and has tutored for the Arvon Foundation as well as mentoring for The Literary Consultancy.

Her first music theatre piece, the regina monologues, was commissioned by the Covent Garden Festival in 2001, and starred, in respective productions, Penelope Keith, Janet Suzman and Susannah York. Other commissions for theatre have included The One I Love, a music theatre piece on conscientious objection to war for New Kent Opera, It’s Your Funeral, Baby, for Brighton-based company Theatre and Beyond, and Red All Over, a site-specific play performed in six rooms of a hotel, commissioned by the Lewes Live Literature Festival. Her most recent play, Eat This, was produced in a disused brewery and revived in the autumn of 2011 with the addition of an accompanying piece, Drink That.

In 2004, she founded her own production company, The Paddock, and as the Artistic Director, devised and produced theatre, dance and opera projects, including the children’s theatre piece, Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep, a new touring production of Daisy Ashford’s The Young Visiters , a one-day outdoor dance festival, Something to Dance About, involving seven newly commissioned dances, and The Shoe Nail Dance, a High Street dance involving 200 people. In 2007, she commissioned and directed The Finnish Prisoner , a new opera from the composer Orlando Gough and librettist Stephen Plaice. The Finnish Prisoner had its world première in a warehouse in Lewes in a co-production with Finnish National Opera and was nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Society award in three categories.

In 2005 and 2007, Waters worked with The Samling Foundation leading a large-scale education project at the Sage Gateshead Music Centre on Mozart’s Così fan tutte (2005) and Don Giovanni (2007), directed by Sir Thomas Allen and culminating in the creation and performance of youth versions of the two operas. [3] In 2013, Waters directed a new main stage community opera for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, co-devised with the composer Orlando Gough, librettist Stephen Plaice, and designer Es Devlin. In November 2013, she directed Chabrier’s L’Etoile for New Sussex Opera, and in May 2014 she directed a new production of Harrison Birtwistle’s Down by the Greenwood Side for the Brighton Festival.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phyllis Curtin</span> American operatic soprano

Phyllis Curtin was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in Susannah and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from singing in 1984. She was named Boston University's Dean Emerita, College of Fine Arts in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glyndebourne Festival Opera</span> English opera festival

Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an annual opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Sellars</span> American theatre director

Peter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. Sellars is professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he teaches Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action. He is widely regarded as one of the key figures of theatre and opera of the last 50 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fritz Busch</span> German conductor

Fritz Busch was a German conductor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danielle de Niese</span> Australian-American lyric soprano (born 1979)

Danielle de Niese is an Australian-American lyric soprano. After success as a young child in singing competitions in Australia, she moved to the United States where she developed an operatic career. From 2005 she came to widespread public attention with her performances as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne, England.

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.

Jeannette Aster is an Austrian-born opera director who has staged productions in Canada, where she was raised and educated, and internationally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miah Persson</span> Swedish opera singer

Miah Persson is a Swedish soprano, active internationally and in recordings.

<i>The Finnish Prisoner</i>

The Finnish Prisoner is an opera by Orlando Gough set to an English-language libretto written by Stephen Plaice who based it on the true story of Finnish prisoners of war incarcerated in England during the Åland War, part of the Crimean War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Plaice</span> UK-based dramatist and scriptwriter (born 1951)

Stephen Plaice is a UK-based dramatist and scriptwriter who has written extensively for theatre, opera and television. In 2014 he was appointed Writer in Residence at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He became Professor of Dramatic Writing at the school in 2018.

Evelyn Mandac is a soprano opera singer, orchestra soloist, recitalist and voice teacher from the Philippines. She is based in New York City. She's also listed in "Who's Who in Music and Musicians."

Anthony John Elwyn Besch was an English opera and theatre director. As a young man he worked at Glyndebourne assisting the directors Carl Ebert and Günther Rennert. His first work as an opera director was for Welsh National Opera in 1954. Among other British companies with whom he worked were Opera North, D'Oyly Carte, The Royal Opera, the Aldeburgh Festival and Garsington Opera. He was most closely associated with English National Opera, Scottish Opera, and the New Opera Company.

Christine Imogen Rice is an English operatic mezzo-soprano. She has performed across Europe at venues including the Royal Opera House, the Bavarian State Opera, the Frankfurt Opera, the Teatro Real and the English National Opera. From 2004 to 2006 she was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tove Dahlberg</span> 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.

Delores Ziegler is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active international performance career since the late 1970s. A former resident artist at the Cologne Opera, she has performed leading roles with many of the world's best opera houses, including La Scala, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. She is currently a professor of voice at the University of Maryland. While she has performed a broad repertoire, she is widely admired for her performances in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss; particularly Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Idamante in Idomeneo, and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.

Irene Eisinger was a German and British opera singer and film actress. Her career was closely linked to the foundation and the early years of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

Patricia Johnson is an English operatic mezzo-soprano. She made an international career and is known for her dramatic voice and her stage presence. She appeared in leading roles of the repertory, such as Carmen and Eboli, and created new roles, such as the Baronin Grünwiesel in Henze's Der junge Lord, and the Princess in Nicolas Nabokov's Love's Labour's Lost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floris Visser</span> Dutch opera director & arts administrator

Floris Visser is a Dutch opera director and arts administrator. He is considered one of the leading talents in a new generation of opera directors, and the former artistic director of the Dutch opera company Opera Trionfo. Visser works in renowned opera houses such as the Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, Zürich Opera House, Dutch National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera & Internationale Händelfestspiele Karlsruhe.

Covid fan tutte is a 2020 comic opera created and produced by the Finnish National Opera. It is a comedic adaptation of Mozart's Così fan tutte, depicting life in the spring of 2020 as disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The libretto is by Minna Lindgren, written to music by Mozart. The idea for the opera was conceived by conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and soprano Karita Mattila, after the pandemic caused the cancellation of Finnish National Opera's planned production of Wagner's Die Walküre. A filmed performance of the work was available for streaming worldwide through March 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madison Nonoa</span> New Zealand opera singer

Madison Nonoa is a New Zealand-born soprano opera singer of Samoan, Niuean, and Pākehā heritage.

References

  1. ↑ "Mark Rylance: 'You have to move into the chaos'", The Observer, 1 July 2013. Accessed 18 February 2016
  2. ↑ QueenSpark Books: Susannah Waters Archived 2015-02-22 at the Wayback Machine . Accessed 18 February 2016
  3. ↑ Hickling, Alfred (8 July 2005). "Cosi FanTutte". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 21 February 2023.
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.