Catherine Hunold

Young lyrical-dramatic soprano Catherine Hunold was born in Paris. She made her first entry into the world of opera early on, at the age of eleven, appearing in the world premiere of Anton Denisov’s opera L’Ecume des jours, at Paris’ Opéra Comique. She studied voice with Mada Mesplé at the Conservatoire de Saint-Maur-les-Fossés, and musicology at the University of Paris. Her current principal voice tutor is the bass-baritone Malcolm King. Catherine Hunold is a laureate of several international competitions. In 2006 she reached the final of the Wagner Voices Competition, and appeared at Venice’s Teatro Malibran and Teatro La Fenice. She won the City of Arles Voice Contest, and in October 2005 received second prize from the Marie Kraja Singing Competition in Tirana, Albania. She won gold medal along with the SACEM Prize from the Young Singers Competition in Luxembourg in 2002 for her reading of Poulenc’s songs. In September 2006 she received an invitation from Christa Ludwig to attend her master classes devoted to Strauss, Wagner and Puccini, where Catherine Hunold had an opportunity to work on the operatic parts of Ariadne, Elsa, die Marschallin, and Tosca. She received a Villecroze Foundation scholarship enabling her to study further parts in Vienna, under Christa Ludwig’s tutelage.

Between 2002 and 2004, she made appearances as, among other parts, Electra in Campra’s Idoménée (at the Wiesbaden Opera Festival), made her French debut as Purcell’s Dido (Dido and Aeneas), and sang Offenbach’s Périchole, offering ample proofs of her versatility as a singer.

During the 2004/2005 season, Catherine Hunold was a member of the Flanders Operastudio, where she concentrated on perfecting the Mozartian singing style under the guidance of Margaret Price. While there, she sang the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), and the First Lady (Die Zauberflöte). Beyond that, she appeared in the stage version of the song Julia de Burgos from Bernstein’s cycle Songfest, directed by Philippe Sireuil1 in Bruges; sang Janáček’s Jenůfa at Ghent’s Vlaamse Opera; and created the role of Ilse in the opera Hercule Haché, by contemporary composer Lucien Posman. Also at the Vlaamse Opera, she sang Clorinda in Monteverdi’s opera Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, and appeared with the pianist Graham Johnson in a rendition of Mahler’s song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn. She created Sieglinde in a production of Wagner’s Die Walküre, within the Théâtre du Châtelet’s project La Leçon de Musique. In 2007 she sang Agnès in the fragment of Berlioz’s opera La nonne sanglante  at the Radio France Festival in Montpellier. During the last season Catherine Hunold sang the soprano solo in a series of performances of Verdi’s Requiem in Paris and on a subsequent world tour; and created the role of Queen in Valentin Villenave’s opera Affaires Etrangères at Montpellier, where she also appeared in a solo recital. In September 2009 she was cast in the season’s opening performance at Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, of Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel.

The artist’s future projects include her anticipated debut appearance as Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin at Saint-Etienne, and the part of Flower Maiden in Parsifal at Nice. In 2011 she will appear as Peppa in the opera Mateo Falcone by French composer Louis Théodore Gouvy, and in Ambroise Thomas’s Françoise de Rimini.