Soprano Kate Royal was born in London and completed her vocal studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama; she made her first stage appearances as part of the National Opera Studio. Her international career was launched in 2004, when she won two major awards: the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the John Christie Award; in 2007 she garnered the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award. Since then Royal has been a guest artist at many leading opera houses and festivals. At Glyndebourne she has sung Pamina (The Magic Flute), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), and Micaëla (Carmen); she has performed the Countess in Figaro at Aix-en-Provence, Helena in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Teatro Real in Madrid, and Monteverdi’s Poppea at English National Opera. The Royal Opera House in London engaged her to sing in the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, and she has also appeared at the Opéra National de Paris in Handel’s L’Allegro. In the spring of 2011 she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Gluck’s Euridice. In concert Kate Royal has worked with numerous major orchestras and conductors, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Simon Rattle, the Berlin Philharmonic and William Christie, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Adès, Le Concert d’Astrée and Emmanuelle Haïm, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Pablo Heras-Casado, and the Filarmonica della Scala and Gustavo Dudamel. Royal has also made her reputation as a lieder singer and has recorded Schumann’s Liederkreis (Op. 39) with Graham Johnson; in February 2011 she and pianist Malcolm Martineau released the CD A Lesson in Love, which brings together love songs from Germany, France, Great Britain, and America ranging from Schubert and Schumann to Britten and Copland.
August 2011