Sophie Bevan

The soprano Sophie Bevan, who was born in 1983 in County Somerset in southwestern England, studied at the Benjamin Britten International Opera School, where she appeared on stage while still a student as Monteverdi’s Poppea and as Susanna in Mozart’s Figaro. The beginning of her professional career was accompanied by numerous prizes, including the Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent, which she won in 2010, as well as the Royal Philharmonic Society Award., the Times Breakthrough Award, and the South Bank Sky Arts Award, all of which she garnered in 2012. The critic Rupert Christiansen (The Telegraph) has described her as the most exciting new discovery of recent years. At present Bevan is closely associated above all with the English National Opera, where she has appeared as Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Polissena in Handel’s Radamisto, Yum Yum in Sullivan’s The Mikado, and Sophie in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. She has sung the title role in Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Welsh National Opera and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at the Garsington Festival. In the fall of 2012 she made her debut at the Royal Opera House in London, where she sang the Woodbird in Siegfried and where she was then immediately engaged as Pamina in The Magic Flute in the spring of 2013. Bevan’s concert repertoire spans from Purcell and Handel through Haydn and Mozart to the Brahms Requiem and Britten’s Spring Symphony. She has appeared in concert with such conductors as Ivor Bolton, Laurence Cummings, Edward Gardner, Philippe Herreweghe, Paul McCreesh, and Roger Norrington. As a lieder singer she has performed at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and at Wigmore Hall in London.

May 2013