Jamie Barton's program brings a refreshingly personal, uniquely feminist perspective focusing on women composers and putting them in context alongside their male peers.
The winner of the 2017 Beverly Sills Artist Award and 2015 Richard Tucker Award, the winner of both Main and Song Prizes at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, a winner of the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and a Grammy nominee, American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has been described by The Guardian as "a great artist, no question, with an imperturbable steadiness of tone, and a nobility of utterance that invites comparison not so much with her contemporaries as with mid-20th century greats such as Kirsten Flagstad."
Ms. Barton's 2018-19 season includes appearances as Azucena in Il trovatore at Lyric Opera of Chicago and Bayerische Staatsoper, a Renee Fleming Voices recital at the Kennedy Center, the Verdi Requiem at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and a role debut as Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking at her hometown opera company, Atlanta Opera. She opens her season with a role debut as Sara in Roberto Devereux at San Francisco Opera, opposite frequent collaborator Sondra Radvanovsky, and returns to SFO as Jezibaba in Rusalka in 2019. Ms. Barton brings her acclaimed Fricka to the Metropolitan Opera's Ring cycle, with a Met Live in HD performance of Die Walkure simulcast to cinemas in over seventy countries.
Kathleen Kelly enjoys a wide-ranging and dynamic musical life as a pianist, opera coach, conductor, and master teacher. The first woman and first American named as Director of Musical Studies at the Vienna State Opera, Kathleen joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 2015 as that school's first Coach/Conductor of Opera. There, she has led performances of Giulio Cesare, Gianni Schicchi, L'heure espagnole, Cosi fan tutte, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.