After studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, Katherine Watson joined the Jardin des Voix Academy. Since then, she has performed regularly with Les Arts Florissants. In 2012, she received the John Christie Award, a prize given to a young singer by the Glyndebourne Opera. She has performed at Glyndebourne in The Fairy Queen and Hippolyte et Aricie (Diane), at Madrid’s Teatro Real in L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Virtù, Damigella) and Médée (the Italian woman, the Ghost), in Caen, Luxembourg and Paris in Didone (Cassandra), at the Bordeaux Opera and the Opéra Royal in Versailles in Les Indes galantes (Phani) and Dardanus, and at the Festival de Beaune in Jephtha, Belshazzar (Nitocris) and Acis et Galatée (Galatée). She has also appeared in concert with the English Concert, the Hallé Orchestra (The Messiah), the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (the Christmas Oratorio), and the Academy of Ancient Music. Her repertoire also includes more contemporary works like Mahler’s 4th Symphony, Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables, Samuel Barber’s Knoxville – Summer of 1915 and Britten’s Les Illuminations.
Katherine Watson also performs in recital with a repertoire that includes Mozart, Schubert, Mahler, Strauss, Poulenc and Messiaen. More recently, she performed the title role in Theodora with Les Arts Florissants at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and in New York, Telaire (Castor et Pollux) at London’s Wigmore Hall, Handel’s Messiah with the Concert Spirituel, the title role in Mondonville’s Isbé at the Müpa in Budapest, Mérope (Persée) in Metz and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Cleopatra (Alexander Balus) at the Handel Festival in London, Amélite (Zoroastre) in Beaune, Aix en Provence, Montpellier and at the Komische Oper in Berlin, and Belinda (Dido and Aeneas) in Rouen, Vichy and Versailles. This season, she is singing Giunone (Il Ritorno di Ulisse in patria) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Anna (Miranda) at the Opéra Comique, Messiah with the Handel and Haydn Society and Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Aside from William Christie, she has also sung under the baton of numerous eminent conductors including Paul Agnew, Harry Bicket, Harry Christophers, Stephen Cleobury, Jonathan Cohen, Emmanuelle Haïm, Nicholas Kraemer, Stephen Layton, Sir Roger Norrington, and Christophe Rousset.
Katherine Watson is making her Paris Opera debut.
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