Anthony Gilbert: On Beholding a Rainbow

Susan Bickley is firmly established as one of the most versatile mezzo-sopranos of her generation, equally at home in the opera house or on the concert platform, with a wide repertory encompassing the Baroque, the great 19th and 20th Century dramatic roles and the music of today.

 

Equally at home in baroque, nineteenth and twentieth century and contemporary music, she has sung important roles for Opéra de Paris, Glyndebourne, San Francisco Opera, De Vlaamse Opera and at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden. She created roles in Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer, Turnage's Twice through the Heart and Gerald Barry's The bitter tears of Petra von Kant. In concert, she has performed with all of the major British symphony orchestras and ensembles, with Les Arts Florissants, the Ensemble InterContemporain and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, at Carnegie Hall, New York, and at the Salzburg Festival. A distinguished recitalist, she has worked with pianists Roger Vignoles, Iain Burnside and Julius Drake.