Versatile soprano Elizabeth Watts has a repertory ranging from Alessandro Scarlatti to György Ligeti. The recipient of some of the most coveted prizes in British vocal music, she has recorded frequently for major labels in Britain and elsewhere. Watts was born in 1979 in Norwich, England. Her first musical experiences came as a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, and she attended the Norwich School for Girls. At Sheffield University, she studied archaeology, graduating with first-class honors, but she switched back to music after receiving the Myra Verney Recital Award from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and earning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. She studied there with Lillian Watson in the Benjamin Britten International Opera School and graduated in 2005, earning the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Rose Bowl prize. That year, she entered the Young Singers' Programme at the English National Opera, where she won the Kathleen Ferrier Award the following year. At the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2007, she won the coveted Rosenblatt Song Prize and began a three-year stint as a BBC 3 New Generation Artist. In 2008, Watts made her recording debut with an album of Schubert lieder on the RCA Red Seal label. By that time, Watts was already a seasoned performer, not only in Britain but in the U.S., where she appeared several times with the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston. She made her debut with the Santa Fe Opera in 2008. In Britain, she appeared as Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Welsh National Opera and as Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Watts has been heard as a recitalist at such top venues as Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room in London, the Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festivals, and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. She has appeared in concert music with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie, and the NDR Radiophilharmonie. Watts was heard on recordings on various leading labels in the 2010s, including Harmonia Mundi, Linn Records, PentaTone, and Hyperion. In 2021, she appeared on a recording of Thomas Arne's rarely-heard opera Artaxerxes on Signum Classics, and in 2024, she was featured on the Nimbus Alliance recording Richard Blackford: Songs of Nadia Anjuma. ~ James Manheim, Rovi

Elizabeth Watts

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