Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano

Sarah Connolly studied piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow.  She was made a DBE in the 2017 Birthday Honours, having previously been made a CBE in the 2010 New Year’s Honours.  In 2011 she was honored by the Incorporated Society of Musicians and presented with the Distinguished Musician Award. She is the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2012 Singer Award.

Recent highlights include her debut at the Wiener Staatsoper in a new production of Ariodante, the title role in Giulio Cesare at the Glyndebourne Festival, and Brangäne Tristan und Isolde for the Gran Teatro del Liceu.

She has also sung the title role in Maria Stuarda and Roméo I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Opera North); Komponist (Welsh National Opera) and Octavian Der Rosenkavalier (Scottish Opera).  A favorite at the English National Opera, her many roles for the company have included Geschwitz Lulu; Octavian; the title roles in Charpentier’s Medée and Handel's Agrippina, Xerxes, Ariodante and Ruggiero Alcina; the title role in The Rape of Lucretia; Didon Les Troyens; Roméo, Susie The Silver Tassie and Sesto - for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

Her many concert engagements include appearances at the Lucerne, Salzburg, Tanglewood and Three Choirs Festivals and at the BBC Proms where, in 2009, she was a memorable guest soloist at The Last Night. She has appeared in recital in London, New York, Boston, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Stuttgart; at the Incontri in Terra di Siena La Foce and the Schubertiada Vilabertran; and at the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, and Oxford Lieder Festivals.

Committed to promoting new music, her world premiere performances include Judith Bingham’s The Colour of Fire (Two Moors Festival); Torsten Rasch’s A Welsh Night (Three Choirs Festival); Gareth Farr’s Relict Furies (Edinburgh Festival); Jonathan Harvey’s Songs of Li Po (Aldeburgh Festival) and Sir John Tavener’s Tribute to Cavafy (Symphony Hall, Birmingham) and Gnosis (BBC Proms).