Project Category: Singer

The American soprano made a memorable debut at San Francisco Opera creating the role of Stella, alongside Renée Fleming, in the world premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1998. Among her operatic appearances have been the title role of Handel’s Semele for Santa Fe Opera, Musetta in La Bohème at Covent Garden, the title role of Matilde di Shabran in Pesaro and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro in Chicago. Her growing discography includes Meyerbeer¹s L’Etoile du Nord, Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and Philip Glass’s Hydrogen Jukebox. She sings Desdemona on the Opera Rara recording of Rossini’s Otello and appears on Pacini’s Carlo di Borgogna, Mozart The Supreme Decorator and Rossini’s Zelmira.

Tenor Bruce Ford is firmly established as one of today’s most outstanding singers. He has earned high praise for extraordinary vocal beauty and range, textual vividness, authoritative style and technical prowess. He has recorded seventeen full-length operas for Opera Rara, including Otello, Ricciardo e Zoraide, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Maria Regina d’Inghilterra, Pia de Tolomei, to name but a few. In addition, Opera Rara has issued a recital disc, Romantic Heroes, featuring Bruce, as well as a compilation entitled ‘Bruce Ford-Serious Rossini’. He also appears on many of the discs in the ‘Il Salotto’ series. Born in the USA, he has spent most of his 22 year long career in the leading opera houses of Europe and America. After his highly acclaimed debut at Pesaro in 1990, he has sung at Covent Garden (Almaviva, Ferrando, Mitridate, Osiride, Tito), La Scala (Uberto in La Donna del Lago and Paolo Erisso in Maometto II), The Metropolitan Opera (Almaviva), the Paris Opera (Ferrando, Almaviva, Lindoro) and the Glyndebourne, Florence, Edinburgh and Salzburg Festivals. He has sung under Claudio Abbado, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Ricardo Muti, Ivor Bolton, Alberto Zedda, and numerous other well-known conductors.

Born in Militello, Sicily, Nuccia Focile studied with Elio Battaglia at the Turin Conservatory. She has sung at all the world’s great opera houses, making her Met debut as Mimi in La Boheme in 1995, and enjoys an extensive concert career, including highly acclaimed Edinburgh Festival recitals. Her operatic recordings include Eugene Onegin with Semyon Bychkov and three operas with Charles Mackerras – Cosi fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni. For Opera Rara, she sang the part of Eleonora in Donizetti’s L’assedio di Calais, and can be heard on the anthology A Hundred Years of Italian Opera, 1820-1830, in highlights from Ricci’s La prigione di Edimburgo, plus Volume 4 of the Il Salotto series (Il Sibilo).

The American soprano Renée Fleming has sung in all the world’s major opera houses and worked with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev and the late Sir Georg Solti. Among her recordings are a number of solo discs, including Mozart and Strauss arias and a Schubert album with Christoph Eschenbach. Known as a champion of new music, she has performed in the world premieres of André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, John Corigliano’s The Ghost of Versailles and a revival at the Metropolitan Opera of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. For Opera Rara, she has recorded the title role of Donizetti’s Rosmonda d’Inghilterra.

Loïc Félix attended the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, studying with Christiane Eda-Pierre and Christiane Patard. He attends Master Classes with Michel Sénéchal, Régine Crespin and Renata Scotto. He also has a degree in dramatic arts. On stage, he has appeared as Pedrillo in L’Enlèvement au Sérail in Angers and Saint-Céré, and under Marc Minkowski in Baden-Baden, Aix-en-Provence and Luxembourg, Lacouf in Mamelles de Tiresias and the title role of Britten’s Albert Herring in Rennes. He sang in La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein (Prince Paul) and Le Nozze di Figaro (Don Basilio) in Strasbourg, Il Turco in Italia (Albazar) in Marseille, La Vie Parisienne (Le Brésilien) in Toulouse and Saint-Etienne, Orphée aux Enfers(Aristée / Pluton) in Liège and Avignon, and in David Mc Vicar’s new production of Carmen at Glyndebourne. For Opera Rara he appears on Offenbach’s Vert-VertDonizetti’s Maria di Rohan Rossini’s Ermione and Entre Nous: Celebrating Offenbach.

Born in South Wales, Rebecca Evans studied at the Guildhall School in London. She has sung often at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, her roles including Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Despina (Così fan tutte) and Nannetta (Falstaff). She has taken the title role of The Cunning Little Vixen for Scottish Opera and Romilda in Xerxes, and she makes regular appearances at Welsh National Opera. Her work in Europe has included engagements at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, the Netherlands Opera and Opera de Lausanne. In the US, she has taken the stage at the New York Met, Santa Fe Opera and San Francisco Opera. In concert she has appeared at the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Tanglewood and Ravinia festivals, and she is a regular guest at the BBC Proms. A Grammy Award-winning artist, she has recorded prolifically and is heard on Opera Rara’s disc of highlights from Paer’s Sofonisba.

Born in Lebanon and brought up in Canada, Ms. El-Khoury earned her Bachelor of Music at the University of Ottawa. She received her Artist Diploma from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, and is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She is a First Prize winner in many competitions including: the Loren L. Zachary Competition, the Opera Index Competition, the George London Foundation, and the Mario Lanza Vocal Competition. She has sung the role of Violetta for Welsh National Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Dutch National Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival and Canadian Opera Company, Maria Stuarda for Seattle Opera and Musetta (La bohème) for Bavarian State Opera, Canadian Opera Company and Dutch National Opera. Her concert engagements include Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and Lorin Maazel, the title role in Rusalka at the Amsterdam Concergebouw with James Gaffigan, Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the Orchestre de Paris and Jésus López Cobo and a gala concert with Juan Diego Flórez at the Beiteddine Festival. Joyce has recorded two Donizetti operas with Opera Rara – Belisario and Les Martyrs both conducted by Sir Mark Elder.

Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, Thora Einarsdottir studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Reykjavik Academy of Singing. She studied voice with Laura Sarti and Ólöf Kolbrun Hardardottir and took private lessons with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. Thora was a member of the ensemble at Hessische Staatstheater Wiesbaden from 2001-2008 where she sang a wide number of roles. She has performed at the Icelandic Opera, Malmo Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, English National Opera, Opera North, Opera Factory, in Mannheim, Darmstadt, Nürnberg, Karlsruhe, Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Berlin and Salzburg. Roles include Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Ilia (Idomeneo), Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare), Gilda (Rigoletto), Nannetta (Falstaff), Ännchen (Der Freischütz), Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Lucia (The Rape of Lucretria), Adina (L’elisir d’amore) and Marie (La fille du regiment). She has also performed in concerts with the Icelandic Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, The Beethoven Orchester in Bonn, Bach Collegium and Münchener Bach-Chor. Thora has worked with conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Osmo Vänska, Lothar Zagrosek, Christipher Warren-Green, Sir Elgar Howarth, Pinchas Steinberg, Edward Gardner, Robin Stableton, Marc Piollet, Jonathan Darlington, Nicholas Kok, John Fiore and Paul Goodwin. Her wide recording experience includes the world premier recording of Offenbach’s “Vert-Vert” for Opera Rara conducted by David Parry. She has also recorded for Swedish record label “BIS” and for radio and CD’s in her native country Iceland.

Born in Lincoln, England, Jane Eaglen has become one of the most appreciated new Wagner sopranos. She has sung Brünnhilde at La Scala and appeared as Norma and Abigaille in Nabucco with Riccardo Muti in the Ravenna Festival. Her Metropolitan Opera debut was Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and since then she has sung Wagner internationally, in Vienna, Paris, Munich, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Madrid, Buenos Aires and London. She can be heard on Opera Rara’s recording of Mayr’s Medea in Corinto in the title role.

Born in Pescara in 1969, the Italian bass-baritone made his debut in Così fan tutte and Don Giovanniand went on to symphonic and operatic engagements with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Bernard Haitink and the late Sir Georg Solti. Operas have included Armida and Guillaume Tell at Pesaro, as well as Mozart’s Masetto at the Metropolitan Opera, Figaro at Salzburg and Colline in La Bohème at Covent Garden. Recorded work has included Rigoletto and I Lombardi under James Levine, Don Giovanni (as Leporello) with John Eliot Gardiner and, for Opera Rara, Elmiro in Rossini’s Otello.