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“Graham’s mezzo-soprano is a voice without regrets, healthy, rounded, ineffably musical, and eager for a challenge.” – New Yorker
Susan Graham, one of the world’s foremost stars of opera and recital, is a compelling and versatile singing actress. Celebrated as an expert in French music, Graham has been honored by the French government with the title "Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.”
Highlights of Susan Graham’s 2011-12 season include the Grammy-award winner’s much-anticipated Canadian Opera Company debut as Iphigenia in Gluck’s Iphigenia en Tauride. Graham also returns to the San Francisco Opera in the title role of Handel's Xerxes, and the Paris Opera for performances of Franz Lehár’s popular operetta The Merry Widow. In January, she embarks on an American recital tour with her frequent collaborator, pianist
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“Graham’s mezzo-soprano is a voice without regrets, healthy, rounded, ineffably musical, and eager for a challenge.” – New Yorker
Susan Graham, one of the world’s foremost stars of opera and recital, is a compelling and versatile singing actress. Celebrated as an expert in French music, Graham has been honored by the French government with the title "Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.”
Highlights of Susan Graham’s 2011-12 season include the Grammy-award winner’s much-anticipated Canadian Opera Company debut as Iphigenia in Gluck’s Iphigenia en Tauride. Graham also returns to the San Francisco Opera in the title role of Handel's Xerxes, and the Paris Opera for performances of Franz Lehár’s popular operetta The Merry Widow. In January, she embarks on an American recital tour with her frequent collaborator, pianist Malcolm Martineau that culminates in her return to Carnegie Hall.
This past season, the “peerless American mezzo” (New York Observer) took on a number of favorite roles. At Teatro Real Madrid and at her home company, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Graham stared opposite Plácido Domingo in the title role of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, on which she had already “put her own stamp” (Chicago Tribune). At Houston Grand Opera, she reprised her “breath-stopping” (Independent, UK) portrayal of the Composer in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and with the Philadelphia Orchestra, she sang Marguerite in Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust. In the 2009-2010 season, Susan Graham sang Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, and recorded the song cycle for the Symphony’s own record label. She returned to the Metropolitan Opera for a signature role – Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier – and she portrayed Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Nicholas McGegan on the West Coast. Lyric Opera of Chicago welcomed her back for her first company performances in Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, which she performed during the 2008-09 season at the Met and in The Met: Live in HD. With the Houston Grand Opera, she has also taken on the title role in Handel’s Xerxes, singing the famous aria “Ombra mai fù.” Graham closed out the 2009-10 season performing Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer with the New York Philharmonic under Sir Andrew Davis.
Graham is a leader in the international Christoph Gluck opera revival. She has sung the title role of Iphigénie en Tauride in a new production staged for her by the Metropolitan Opera, and at Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Graham put her own stamp on the part, bringing both nobility and vibrant vocal beauty to her affecting performance.”
At home and abroad, Susan Graham has sung leading roles from the 17th to 20th centuries in the great opera houses of the world, including Milan’s La Scala, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Opéra national de Paris, Dresden’s Semperoper, and the Salzburg Festival, and she has appeared with many of the world’s leading conductors and orchestras. Dubbed “America’s favorite mezzo” by Gramophone magazine, Graham captivates audiences with her expressive voice, tall and graceful stature, and engaging acting ability in both comedy and tragedy.
Three years ago, her season finale was Handel’s Ariodante with San Francisco Opera. In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, “Susan Graham added one more entry to her long list of triumphs with the company, turning in a performance marked by nobility and technical bravura.”
Graham created the part of Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking for San Francisco Opera, and created leading roles in two Metropolitan Opera world premieres: An American Tragedy by Tobias Picker and The Great Gatsby by John Harbison.
Three seasons ago, Graham expanded her distinguished discography with two recordings: Un frisson français with pianist Malcolm Martineau, a survey of a century of French song; and her interpretation of Berlioz’s La mort de Cléopâtre, recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle and released by EMI Classics. Earlier solo CDs include Poèmes de l’amour, with Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer. Her disc of Charles Ives songs with Pierre-Laurent Aimard won a Grammy, and she received both a Grammy nomination and France’s Maria Callas award for her Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. A New York Times review stated, “Ms. Graham … paints Dido as passionate from the start. ‘When I am laid in earth’ is as wrenching an account as you’ll find on disc.”
Her complete opera recordings range from Handel’s Alcina and Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride to Barber’s Vanessa and Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. Graham’s Dido in Les Troyens, recorded live for DVD at the Paris Châtelet, was praised by Gramophone as “moving and intense … strongly acted and magnificently sung.”
Born in New Mexico and raised in Texas, Susan Graham studied at Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School of Music, which awarded her an honorary Doctor of Music in 2008. She won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the Schwabacher Award from San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, as well as a Career Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. Graham was Musical America’s 2004 Vocalist of the Year, and in 2006 her hometown of Midland, Texas declared September 5 “Susan Graham Day” in perpetuity.
www.susangraham.com
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Reviews
"Susan Graham was a joy to watch and to hear: she delivered her lines with boldness, majesty and precision, highlighting both the most delicate and the most tyrannical aspects of the Persian king. Her performance was practically flawless: hearing her delivering such complex ornamentation for over three hours made her seem super-human."
Marina Romani, Musicalcriticism.com
"This show also has a star, singing one of her signature roles: Susan Graham, an American mezzo who has virtually taken over a part that used to be sung mainly by sopranos. The richness and detail of her singing was such that when she moved from recitative to aria, it seemed that the flow of melody merely changed its form, not its intensity. She gave the rather amiable, major-key music of Iphigénie’s big Act II lament a melancholic serenity that was perfect for the scene, the score and the moment. But I didn’t entirely buy the show’s well-articulated view of the heroine as a naïve girl-woman; she has already cut a lot of throats by the time we meet her."
Robert Everett-green, The Globe and Mail
"After Thursday night, I prefer to exult in the fact that I have seen Susan Graham play Iphigenia, a performance that evokes the same awe as any natural or man-made wonder. The exquisite Graham not only is totally believable as the driven-to-madness Iphigenia, but the way she gives voice to those feelings is almost frightening. Like the giant sword she brandishes, her voice can catch the light one moment and cut through your heart the next "
Richard Ouzounian, Toronto.com
"Friday’s main draw was mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, tapped here to open the program with music from one of her signature roles, as Iphigénie (from Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride’’). Supported by a fine quartet of Tanglewood Music Center sopranos, Graham was in splendid voice and brought the music across with a luxurious, well-focused tone and plenty of dramatic conviction. She returned on the second half with two excerpts to savor, from Handel’s “Alcina’’ and “Ariodante.’’"
Jeremy Eichler, Boston.com
"…a fine cast headed by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham's handsome, ardent young Octavian… Octavian is one of Graham's signature roles, and on Saturday night she was everything a worldly Marschallin or a naive Sophie, fresh from convent school, could have wanted. Tall and good-looking, her Octavian was an impetuous lover and a wicked comic. Disguised as the Marschallin's maid, fending off the advances of the boorish Baron Ochs, she was a sparkling blend of self-reliant working girl and flustered sexual prey… Succulent, with a golden warmth and purity of tone, it was an ideal instrument for her ardent but singularly thoughtful Octavian."
Wynne Delcoma, Chicago Sun-Times
"There's no finer Octavian in any theater today than Graham, who delivered the mezzo's music with typical beauty and firmness of sound, making the Marschallin's teenage paramour coltish and vulnerable. Never before has a Lyric production given Graham's impeccable comic timing such a free hand, and she proved absolutely hilarious in her disguise as the gawky chambermaid Mariandel, whom the baron also lusts after."
John von Rhein, The Chicago Tribune
"Susan Graham was in top form as the anguished prince Idamante. Her gorgeous mezzo timbre and marvelous technique shone in arias such as ‘Non ho colpa’ and ‘Il padre adorato’; her signature restraint and superb dignity were right in line with the aims of the production."
Marcia J. Citron, Opera News
"Mezzo Susan Graham in the role of Sondra has the second-best vocal music, and she decorates the ornate arching lines with the charm and confidence of a young woman who, as Clyde says in the novel, is constantly the center of attention."
David J. Baker, Opera News
"Susan Graham was well cast as wealthy Sondra Finchley; her throbbing mezzo has recently gained in sensuality and allure."
Eric Myers, Variety.com
"[Playing the Composer,] she dashes about in fine vocal fettle, firm and strong, but gives herself plenty of room to melt and catch the vulnerability of someone feeling love where least expected."
Geoff Brown, The Times (London)
"Ecstatically applauded by her fans and superbly partnered at the piano by Malcolm Martineau, she brought uncommon sensitivity and restraint to Brahms’ Zigeunerleider, elegant repose to Debussy’s Proses lyriques and muted nostalgia to Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder. One had to admire her sophistication, her impeccable diction, her subtle dynamic scale, her exquisite top tones."
Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times
"…one of opera’s favorite funny girls is back…"
F. Paul Driscoll, Opera News