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Harlequin Agency
203, Fidlas Road Elizabeth Atherton read Music at Trinity College Cambridge before entering the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where she studied with Patricia MacMahon. Elizabeth has won several prestigious prizes including the 2001 Maggie Teyte Prize and the 2003 Handel Singing Competition. Whilst a student at the RSAMD she performed the roles of Conception in L’Heure Espagnole, title role in Alcina, Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, Ilia in Idomeneo and Nora in Riders to the Sea. At the Batignano Festival in Italy, Elizabeth sang the roles of Melissa in Amadigi and La Stonatrilla in Gassmann’s L’Opera Seria, and she performed the role of Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with English Touring Opera. In concert, Elizabeth has performed Verdi Four Sacred Pieces with London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano, Bach B Minor Mass with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Messiah with Northern Sinfonia and Matthew Best, Vivaldi Gloria and Bach Magnificat with Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Haydn Creation with English Festival Orchestra and Sir David Willcocks at the Royal Albert Hall and Berlioz Les Nuits d’Eté with English Chamber Orchestra and Benjamin Wallfisch. In recital she has appeared at Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, the National Portrait Gallery and the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Elizabeth has appeared on In Tune for BBC Radio 3 and made her commercial recording debut with Liszt’s Via Crucis and Missa Choralis with Matthew Best and the Corydon Singers on the Hyperion label. Recent engagements have included Pamina in The Magic Flute and Thibault in Don Carlos for Welsh National Opera, Tippett’s The Vision of St. Augustine with BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Richard Hickox at the 2005 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, Mahler and Strauss Lieder with BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jiri Belohlavek, Handel German Arias at the London Handel Festival, Mozart Coronation Mass with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the St. Magnus Festival, Debussy Trois Ballades de Francois Villon and Boulez Le Soleil des Eaux with Pierre Boulez and BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, Elgar The Spirit of England with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and recitals with Iain Burnside for the BBC Radio 3 Voices series and at Wigmore Hall and the Leeds Lieder+ Festival. Elizabeth is a Welsh National Opera Associate Artist and recipient of the WNO Sir John Moores Award and WNO Chris Ball Bursary. Future roles for the company include Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Minerva in Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Pat ria and Micaela in Carmen. Other plans include Pamina for Grange Park, concerts with Philharmonia Orchestra and Orchestra of WNO and a recording of Childhood Songs with Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside. With the Samling Foundation: Attended Samling Foundation Masterclass Week at the Sharrow Bay Hotel, March 2001, with course tutors Sir Thomas Allen, Malcolm Martineau, Patricia MacMahon, Paul Farrington and Simon Over. "The week was exciting, fun, moving, informative, stimulating, and inspiring. I learnt an enormous amount from the tutors' collective experience, musicality and insight, and felt that I was supported 100% by tutors and students. When rehearsing with Malcolm I felt as though I were making music for the first time in my life. His extraordinary talent for accompaniment gave me a confidence and sense of safety that I had never felt before and encouraged me to do new and unexpected things with the music. His playing encouraged me to take risks, and I entered into a real dialogue between singer and pianist for what seemed like the first time". Education:
Opera:
Solo
Concerts / Oratorio: Recitals: 13
Oct.'02 Berlioz Les Nuits d'Eié: Benjamin Wallfisch, ECO,
Marlborough May
'03 Handel Alcina (Alcina): RSAMD Radio
/ Recording: Education
and Community Work: Part of Yehudi Menuhin's Live Music Now! scheme since June 2000 Past
achievements: Winner
of the prestigious Maggie Teyte Prize 2001, Elizabeth is a regular
recitalist and has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Purcell Room,
Bridgewater Hall and for the Hampstead and Highgate Festival. Her
concert engagements regularly take her all over Britain and have
included appearances with the LSO, ECO, RSNO, OAE and Orchestra
of Scottish Opera under conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Harry
Christophers and Sir Philip Ledger in venues including the Royal
Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concert), St. John's, Smith Square, Queen
Elizabeth Hall, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh and Worcester and Peterborough
Cathedrals. Operatic roles include Caroline I Fairy Queen (understudy
- ENO), Female Chorus I Rape of Lucrelia, Potty I Dreigroschenoper,
Nora / Riders to the Sea (RSAMD), Dido, Valencienne / Merry
Widow. Elizabeth has broadcast live on Radio 3's In Tune programme
and made her solo recording debut for Hypenon with Matthew Best
and the Corydon Singers in Liszt's Via Crucis and Missa Choralis. Future
plans include: Press
Reviews: The Sunday Times / Paul Driver / January 13 2002: That vigour was nonetheless apparent in the later of the two opening concerts that I attended. The soprano Elizabeth Atherton and the trumpeter Alison Balsom were stylish, personable presences and evidently superb musicians. They performed as a duo in Martin Butler's brief Prelude, then with their respective pianists. With lain Fariington, Atherton well conveyed the sustained metaphysical outhurst - its imagery snow-driven, its idiom raptly Messiaen-like - that is Judith Bingham's cantata The Shadow Side of Joy Finzi: A Mad Song, Her top-note vowels were heart-stoppingly pure.
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Elizabeth
Atherton - Soprano