See 19 performances featuring Elizabeth WattsBorn in 1979, Elizabeth Watts was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral and studied archaeology at Sheffield University, graduating with first class honours. She received the Myra Verney Recital Award from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and in 2002 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where she studied with Lillian Watson on the Advanced Opera studies course at the Benjamin Britten International Opera School. In 2004 she was selected for representation by YCAT before graduating from the Royal College in 2005 with distinction and the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Rose Bowl, on top of numerous other prizes and awards including the RCM Lies Askonas Prize, the Maggie Teyte Prize and the Royal Over-Seas League vocal section prize. Most recently she received international acclaim representing England at the 2007 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, reaching the final and winning the prestigious Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize and automatic selection for BBC Radio 3’s prestigious New Generation Artists Scheme. This follows on from other recent successes including winning the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Prize, the 2007 Outstanding Young Artist Award at the "MIDEM Classique Awards" in Cannes, and a nomination for the 2007 Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist of the Year Award. As an alumna of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme in Aldeburgh, Elizabeth has appeared at the Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall, Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Aldeburgh Festival, among many others.
Her operatic work has included the roles of Flora (The Knot Garden) in a Music Theatre Wales / Royal Opera House co-production, the title role in a British Youth Opera production of Handel’s Semele and the role of Arthébuze in a semi-staged performance of Charpentier’s Actéon conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm at the Aldeburgh Festival. Roles at the RCM included Flora (Turn of the Screw), Poppea (Agrippina), Elmira (Sosarme), Fulvia (Ezio) and Constance (Carmelites). Between 2005 and 2007 Elizabeth was a Company Artist at English National Opera on their Young Singers’ Programme making her debut as Papagena (Die Zauberflöte). Roles since then have included Music and Hope (Orfeo), both for ENO and with the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, various roles in Purcell’s King Arthur, again for ENO and in Berkeley California in collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Company, Barbarina (Marriage of Figaro) and covered Atalanta (Xerxes) and Susanna (Figaro). She will make her debut at Santa Fe Opera in the Summer of 2008 singing Susanna (La Nozze di Figaro)
Elizabeth is much in demand as a recitalist and concert singer working regularly with pianists such as Roger Vignoles, Julius Drake, and Gary Matthewman, giving recitals at venues such as the Wigmore Hall, as well as at festivals and music clubs throughout the UK. She has also recently appeared with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia and The English Concert. Future plans include further recitals throughout the UK as well as concerts with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and BBC Philharmonic orchestras, the Orquesta de Radio Televisión Española in Madrid, and the Solistes Europeens in Luxembourg.
| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 28-Feb-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Adam Fischer excel in Haydn |
.jpg) Who better to direct an all-Haydn programme than Adam Fischer? Co-founder of the Haydn Festival, he also founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, who recorded the composer’s entire symphonic output in Haydn Hall of the Esterházy Palace, Eisenstadt, Haydn’s former place of employment. Here the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Fischer offered a programme of three mature Haydn works, all written within a four-year period of Haydn’s seventh decade.
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| 10-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall | A finely-cast Radamisto from The English Concert |
 Handel’s Radamisto has an improbable plot (although average by Baroque opera standards) which can make it difficult to stage. The most recent staging in London was the ENO production in 2010, which had a largely abstract setting.Read full review... | |
| 18-May-2012 Sage: Hall One | Northern Sinfonia: Shifting perceptions of Bruckner, Mendelssohn and Gesualdo |
 Northern Sinfonia’s concert in Hall One of the Sage Gateshead last night challenged the audience to put aside our normal preconceptions, to see well-known composers in a slightly different light. Mendelssohn’s “Fifth” Symphony was actually the second one he wrote – at the age of only 20 – but it was not published until after his death and is not played as much as his other symphonies.Read full review... | |
| 22-Oct-2011 Glyndebourne Opera House | Glyndebourne's Rinaldo on Tour |
 Glyndebourne has a great track record with staging Handel’s works. In recent years, there have been great productions of Theodora, Rodelinda and Giulio Cesare, all of which have proved equally popular at subsequent revival and Glyndebourne on Tour (GTO) productions as well. This year, at the festival and now on tour, Glyndebourne staged a new production of Handel’s Rinaldo, his first opera for the London stage which excited audiences exactly three hundred years ago.
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