Felicity Palmer

Dame Felicity Joan Palmer DBE (born April 6, 1944 in Cheltenham ) is an English opera , oratorio and lied singer ( mezzo-soprano , soprano ).

Life

Palmer studied from 1962 to 1967 at the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama (with a focus on oratorio and lied) and then at the Munich University of Music and Theater with Marianne Schech. She also took lessons from Vera Rozsa in London and sang in the John Alldis Choir and with the Purcell Consort. From 1968 to 1969 she was a member of the King's Singers and thus to this day the only female member of the ensemble. In 1970 she won first prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Fellowship and a year later made her operatic debut as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at Kent Opera (previously she had performed with Purcell's Dioclesian at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London). In 1973 she made her US debut at the Houston Grand Opera with Mozart's Figaro's Wedding , and in 1975 she sang for the first time with the English National Opera in Mozart's Magic Flute as Pamina. Since then she has sung at many of the largest opera houses, such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Chicago and San Francisco Opera Houses, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden , the Scala in Milan , the Deutsche Oper Berlin , the Bavarian State Opera (among others Fricka in Wagner's Ring ), at the Bastille Opera in Paris, at the Salzburg Festival (first in 1988) and at the Glyndebourne Festival (debut 1985 as Florence in Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten ). In addition to the opera, she also performs a lot as a concert and oratorio singer. In England she also sings a lot in Gilbert and Sullivan operets. In 2003 she played Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in Covent Garden .

Palmer is a professor at the Royal College of Music in London.

In 1993 she became Commander and in 2011 Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire .

Web links

• Felicity Palmer at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
• Felicity Palmer at bach-cantatas
• interview