A native of Fairbanks, Alaska, mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux has for more than two decades been delighting public and press alike with her dynamic stage presence and technical virtuosity.
She made her professional debut in 1994 as Isabella (L’italiana in Algeri) with Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera and since then has enjoyed an acclaimed career that has taken her all over the world. In February 2017 she returned to Chicago for concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Other concert appearances during the 2016/17 season included The Colours of Emotions with Concerto Köln in Tours and a programme of works by Riccardo Broschi, Handel, Hasse and Vivaldi titled La magnifica comunità that she presented in Rovigo. Following her appearance as Malcom (La donna del lago) at the 2017 Salzburg Whitsun Festival, she will be presenting a programme of works that were formerly misattributed to Handel, Pianto di Maria, at the Halle Handel Festival.
Other highlights of the 2016/17 season have included her role debut as Emilia in concert performances of Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica at the Cologne Opera and her role debut as Junon in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon, which she sang in a double-bill with Dido and Aeneas. In addition she presented a new concert programme devoted to the figure of Orpheus and gave further performances of Rival Queens, in which she joined forces with the soprano Simone Kermes and sang arias and duets written for two 18th-century divas, Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni.
In the Baroque repertory Vivica Genaux has continued to champion the music of Johann Adolph Hasse, singing the role of Piramo in concert performances of Piramo e Tisbe with Europa Galante under Fabio Bondi in Budapest, Vienna and Valencia. Also with Europa Galante she made her role debut as Lepido in Handel’s Lucio Cornelio Silla in Vienna in January 2017. And in the spring of 2017 she made her role debuts as Eternità and Diana in Cavalli’s La Calisto at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg.
Plans for 2017/18 include concerts with Concerto Köln in the French town of Sisteron, with Europa Galante at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest and with Les Musiciens du Louvre in Barcelona. Other concerts and recitals will take her to Essen, London, Metz, Milan, Valladolid and Warsaw.
Vivica Genaux made her Salzburg Festival debut at Whitsun 2010. She was awarded the Handel Prize of the City of Halle in 2017.
Current as of April 2017
