The French mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch graduated from the class led by Jane Berbié at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. In 1994 she won the s’Hertogenbosch Vocal Competition, soon thereafter beginning her international career with performances at the Royal Opera House in London (Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia), the Semperoper in Dresden (Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos), and the Bavarian Staatsoper (Mozart’s Don Giovanni). Her credits since then have extended to many of the great opera venues, including the Vienna Staatoper, La Scala in Milan, the Opéra national de Paris, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Salzburg Festival. Though the focus of her repertoire was initially on the mezzo characters of Mozart and Richard Strauss as well as such roles as Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther and Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, in recent years Sophie Koch has expanded her spectrum to take on more dramatic Wagnerian roles. In London she has performed Brangäne in Tristan and Venus in Tannhäuser, and she has taken part in new productions of The Ring in Paris and Munich (as Fricka and Waltraute). In Salzburg she has sung Adriano from Rienzi, while at Deutsche Oper Berlin she has appeared in Meyerbeer’s Vasco da Gama. Sophie Koch is a sought-after lieder singer as well. She has given recitals at the festivals in Edinburgh, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, and Verbier; at the Musikverein in Vienna; at London’s Wigmore Hall; and in Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, and Paris. She has moreover recorded lieder by Schubert, Wolf, Fauré, Chausson, Respighi, Wellesz, and Bloch, as well as Massenet’s Werther and Manon and Grieg’s Peer Gynt, and she sang on the premiere recording of Laurent Petitgirard’s Elephant Man. In 2001 Sophie Koch won Dresden Staatsoper’s Christel Goltz Prize, and in 2016 the Vienna Staatsoper named her a Kammersängerin.

July 2017