Sarah Walker, mezzo-soprano
Sarah Walker began her musical life as a violinist at the Royal College of
Music and subsequently studied singing with Vera Rozsa, with whom she has built
up a wide repertoire ranging from Bach and Monteverdi to twentieth-century works
by composers such as Berio, Boulez, Cage, Henze, Ligeti, Copland and Ives. She
is much in demand on the concert platform worldwide, where she has worked with
Ozawa, Davis, Mackerras, Solti, Norrington, Boulez, Rozhdestvensky, Tilson-Thomas,
Masur, Harnoncourt and Rattle, and appears regularly with the major British
orchestras, and at the major British and European festivals. Sarah Walker is
closely associated with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where she has
performed Baba the Turk (The Rake's Progress), Charlotte (Werther), Mrs Sedley
(Peter Grimes) Sallinen's The King Goes Forth To France, Maxwell-Davies'
Taverner, Le nozze di Figaro, and Handel's Samson. With English
National Opera her many rôles include Mary Stuart, Charlotte, the Countess
(The Queen of Spades), Cornelia (Julius Caesar), Britten's Gloriana
and Katisha in The Mikado. She has sung Dido (Les Troyens) at
the Vienna State Opera, Cornelia in Geneva, Ottavia and Cornelia in San Francisco,
Magdalene in Chicago and Cornelia and Micah at the Metropolitan Opera. Her Glyndebourne
début was as Diana in Cavalli's La Calisto and she has since sung
Monteverdi's Ottavia, Penelope and Poppea. Sarah Walker has perhaps received
the greatest critical acclaim for her recitals. Since the overwhelming success
of her Wigmore Hall début she has visited all the major European cities
and Festivals, the United States, Australia and New Zealand and has made numerous
recordings. Sarah Walker was made a C.B.E in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours.