Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill is one of the most renowned singers of her generation. Winner of the 2002 Kathleen Ferrier Award, she has been nominated for a Grammy Award for best opera as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Dialogues des Carmélites. In July 2018, Cargill was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Her operatic roles include Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande, Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle, Mère Marie in Dialogues des Carmélites, Dryade in Ariade auf Naxos, Anna in Les Troyens and the title role in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Famed for her interpretation of Wagner, Cargill sings Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, Fricka in Das Rheingold, Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, Waltraute in Götterdämmerung and Magdalena in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. This season, she makes her debut as Zia Principessa in Puccini’s Il trittico for Scottish Opera, directed by Sir David McVicar. She returns to Glyndebourne as Mère Marie in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, conducted by Robin Ticciati.
In the 2022-23 season, she sings Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Paolo Bartolameolli and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Rafael Payare; Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Robin Ticciati.
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