American soprano Brenda Rae began the 2021/22 season as the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte) under Hartmut Haenchen for her house debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Other appearances this season have included Adèle (Le Comte Ory) for the Zurich Opera, the title role in Handel’s Partenope under Ivor Bolton at Madrid’s Teatro Real, Aminta (Die schweigsame Frau) at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Ophelia in Brett Dean’s Hamlet under Nicholas Carter at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Between 2008 and 2017 Brenda Rae was a member of the Frankfurt Opera, where her wide-ranging repertoire included Elvira (I puritani), Violetta (La traviata), Zerbinetta, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Amina (La sonnambula), Zdenka (Arabella) and Gilda (Rigoletto). As Zerbinetta, one of her signature roles, she has also made her house debuts at the Berlin, Hamburg and Munich State Operas. Other debuts have taken her to the English National Opera for Berg’s Lulu, to the Paris Opéra for Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress) and to the Glyndebourne Festival for Armida in a production of Handel’s Rinaldo that was also released on DVD.
Brenda Rae made her Santa Fe Opera debut in 2013 as Violetta, returning as Norina (Don Pasquale), Madame Herz (Der Schauspieldirektor), Cunegonde (Candide) and Lucia.
She also works regularly with the conductor Harry Bicket, under whose direction she made her debut as Ginevra (Ariodante) at the Lyric Opera in Chicago and sang the title role in Semele as part of a tour with The English Concert that visited London, Paris and New York.
Much in demand as a concert singer and song recitalist, Brenda Rae has appeared all over the world, most notably at London’s Wigmore Hall and at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, where she is returning in the summer of 2022.
Brenda Rae’s extensive discography includes Wagner’s Die Feen, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Lowell Liebermann’s Little Heaven and Offenbach’s Fantasio. The recording of Milhaud’s L’Orestie d’Eschyle in which she sings Athena and a Slave Woman was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2015. She also plans a CD of works by Strauss and Schubert with the pianist Jonathan Ware.
Plans include Maïma in Offenbach’s Barkouf for the Zurich Opera, the Queen of the Night and Norina at the Vienna State Opera, Lucia and Ophélie in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet at the Paris Opéra and Semele at the Bavarian State Opera.
