Susannah Waters

During a ten year career as a singer, Susannah sang principal roles with many of the world's leading opera companies, including Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, the Royal Opera, Santa Fe Opera, L.A. Opera, Seattle Opera, New York City Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, the Theatre du Chatelet and the Royal Swedish Opera at Drottningholm.  During this time, and slotted in between having a daughter Isobel and a son Noah, she was invited by The Samling Foundation to give two different recitals of music and text with her husband Jonathan Cullen, and they fell in love with the whole set-up of the organisation.

In 2001, Susannah gave up singing to pursue her ambitions as a writer and director. The same year she was commissioned by the Covent Garden Festival to write and direct a series of monologues concerning the life of Elizabeth I.  THe resulting work, titled the regina monologues premiered in May 2001 with Penelope Keith playing Elizabeth I, was immediately invited fur further performances in 2002 by festivals both in the UK and abroad.  2003 brings further performances of the regina monologues at venues in the UK and abroad involving actresses Penelope Keith, Janet Suzman and Susannah York as well as the singer Felicity Palmer.  Riding on the back of this success, Susannah has launched her own company The Paddock to produce and tour collaborative new work between established artists and ensembles from the fields of classical music, dance, theatre and literature. Forthcoming projects include a staging of two solo Handel cantatas in collaboration with the choreographer Yolande Snaith and an adaptation for two actors and Victorian parlour piano of nine-year old Daisy Ashford's novella The Young Visitors. 

In the summer of 2002, Susannah assisted Richard Jones at Glyndebourne Festival Opera on a new production of Weber's Euryanthe as well as semi-staging this production for the Glyndebourne BBC Prom.  THis was followed by an invitation from the conductor Mark Elder CBE to semi-stage two performances of Verdi's Falstaff for the Halle Orchestra in May 2003.  Susannah has recently directed Opera Scenes with students at the Royal College of Music and will be writing and directing a new music theatre piece on Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears for Kent Opera in the autumn of 2003.

Susannah has recently been asked by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to write a prologue for one of the plays in the 2003 season, as well as to develop a full-length play on Elizabeth I with the director Tim Carroll.  She has just completed her first novel, which is being handled by Curtis Brown Literary Agency.

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