British-Canadian soprano Jessica Muirhead, described by the New York
Times as a “multihued soprano with floating top notes”, completed her
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at McGill University under the tutelage
of Mrs. Lucile Villeneuve Evans, and was immediately launched into a
solo career on concert and opera stages across Europe and North America.
After winning several competitions in Canada (Elora Festival Competition,
Les Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques, and National Music Festival of Canada),
Jessica tackled competitions at the international level, where her most
recent successes include a George London Award by the George London
Foundation Competition in New York City, Grand Prize at the Concours
de Chant in Toulouse, and 2nd prize at the Francesco Viñas International
Singing Competition in Barcelona where she was also given the coveted
Audience Favourite award.
Jessica's professional debut at the age of 24 as Pamina at the
Vienna
Volksoper, led to subsequent invitations for roles including
Micaëla,
Antonia, Agathe, and most recently
Fiordiligi. Career highlights include
performing Musetta in La Bohème at the
Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich
alongside star singers Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja,
Marguerite
in Faust and Mimi in La Bohème at the
Semperoper Dresden, Alice in Falstaff
with Glyndebourne on Tour in England,
Vreli in A Village Romeo and Juliet
with Wexford Festival Opera, Contessa Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro
at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlo in Lisbon, and
Contessa Almaviva,
Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and
Micaëla in Carmen all at the Canadian
Opera Company in Toronto, her hometown.
On the concert stage, Jessica has appeared with the Hamburger Symphoniker,
the Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center, the Bayerischer Rundfunkorchester,
the OFUNAM Symphonic Orchestra in Mexico City, the Flanders Symphony
and l’Orchestre Chambre de Genève, among others, in repertoire including
Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Fauré’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven’s
9th Symphony & Missa Solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, Berg’s Sieben Frühe
Lieder, Britten's War Requiem, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14, to
name a few. Jessica can be found in a new recording released through
Naxos and Musica Omnia of works by Julian Wachner, with whom she has
also performed in recital in New York City.
Gesangsunterricht erhielt die Künstlerin bei Lucile Villeneuve Evans.
Since August 2015 Jessica has been engaged as Soprano Soloist at
the Aalto-Musiktheater in Essen, where she has revisited her favourite
leading ladies, including Donna Anna in Don Giovanni,
Violetta in La
Traviata, Mimì in La Bohème,
Marguerite in Faust, and added the roles
of Katerina from Martinu’s The Greek Passion,
Vitellia in Mozart’s La
Clemenza di Tito, Marie in Smetana’s Die Verkaufte Braut, and
Elsa in
Wagner’s Lohengrin. She looks forward to two more important role
debuts: Anna in Marschner’s Hans Heiling, and
Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus
