Susannah Phillips, soprano
Santa Fe Opera Apprentice in 2004
In the banner year of 2005, Alabama native Susanna Phillips won four of the world's leading vocal competitions: Operalia (both First Place and the Audience Prize), the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the MacAllister Awards, and the George London Foundation.
In the 2007-2008 season, she will return to Santa Fe Opera as Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro in a new production staged by Jonathan Kent. She also will perform the notoriously difficult role of Elmira in Reinhard Keiser's The Fortunes of King Croesus, in her debut with Minnesota Opera. She will sing another role debut as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni in her first performances with Utah Opera. She will also sing Musetta in La bohème at Madison Opera and Blanche de la Force in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites at Kentucky Opera.
Concert engagements include Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Handel's Messiah with the Pacific Symphony, and Brahms' German Requiem at Carnegie Hall with the Oratorio Society of New York.
Susanna made her Santa Fe Opera solo artist's debut in the summer of 2006, as Pamina in The Magic Flute, in a new Tim Albery production conducted by William Lacey. She returned to Santa Fe the following summer for Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte. During the 2006 and 2007 seasons, she sang Diana in Iphigenie en Tauride at Lyric Opera of Chicago, performed with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic as part of their annual "Composer's Festival" under Alan Gilbert, and sang Beethoven's Mass in C and Choral Fantasy for her Mostly Mozart Festival debut. She also appeared opposite baritone Wolfgang Holzmair in Wolf's Spanish Lieder Book at New York's Weill Recital Hall and under the auspices of the Vocal Arts Society of Washington, DC.
Ms. Phillips is also the winner of the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, and was awarded grants from the Santa Fe Opera and the Sullivan Foundation. Most recently, Ms. Phillips was the first prize winner of the American Opera Society Competition and the Musicians Club of Women in Chicago.