Kate Symonds-Joy

Kate Symonds-Joy graduated from Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University before completing her studies with Lillian Watson and Audrey Hyland in the opera course given by the Royal Academy of Music. There she was awarded the Charles Norman Prize. The young mezzo-soprano has already undertaken such operatic roles as Mrs. Herring in Britten’s Albert Herring at the Aldeburgh Festival, the Wild Girl in Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet at the Wexford Festival Opera, Dorabella in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Royal Academy Opera, and Koukouli in Chabrier’s L’Étoile at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. The latter was led by Gardiner, under whose direction Symonds-Joy has also presented extracts from Bizet’s Carmen with the London Symphony Orchestra and Handel’s Dixit Dominus at the Salzburg Festival. For the coming summer Gardiner has invited her to perform in Mozart’s Requiem in Leipzig, Aldeburgh, and Pisa.

March 2015