Simona Houda-Šaturová

Simona Houda-Šaturová is the winner of the Charlotte and Walter Hamel Award for outstanding vocal achievement (Lübeck, 2007), and of the 2002 Thalia Award for the year’s finest opera creation. She was born in Bratislava, where she also studied at the conservatory. She then pursued her vocal training with Soňa Kresáková, in the master classes of Ileana Cotrubas in Vienna, and with Magreet Honig in Amsterdam. From 1991–1995, she was soloist of the Chamber Opera (Opera Mozart) in Prague, and between 1994 and 1998, she was engaged as soloist of the Prague State Opera on whose stage she created a gallery of roles including Gilda (Rigoletto), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), Oscar (Un ballo in maschera), Angelica (Orlando furioso), Adele (Die Fledermaus), Frasquita (Carmen), Leni (Einem’s The Trial), and as a guest, the parts of Lucia and Rosina in the company’s new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor (2004) and Il barbiere di Siviglia (2005).

The highlights of her career so far have included appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra (2007), at the Salzburger Festspiele, and in a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 during the gala opening of La Salle Pleyel in Paris. She opened her 2009 timetable at the New Year’s concert in Budapest, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Adam Fischer, in Haydn’s The Creation. In Prague, she sang during a gala concert opposite the Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel, and she appeared at Rome’s Sistine Chapel, in a concert for the Pope Benedict XVI broadcast worldwide.

Over the last few years, she has presented herself in concert and opera productions at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet, the Opéra de Monte Carlo, the Frankfurt Opera, the Megaron Mousikis in Athens, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, the Tonhalle Zürich, and the Herkules-Saal in Munich, working with leading conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Adam Fischer, Manfred Honeck, Sylvain Cambreling, Helmuth Rilling, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jiří Bělohlávek, John Fiore, Rolf Beck or Christopher Hogwood. She has to her credit a formidable discography featuring recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra (Ondine, 2009), Camille Saint-Saëns’ Oratorio de Noël (Sony BMG, 2008), Haydn’s Harmonie-Messe and Theresienmesse (Hänssler Classics), Haydn operatic arias (Orfeo), or Mozart sacred works (Arco Diva). The recording, with her participation, of Johann Adolf Hasse’s Requiem & Miserere (Carus Verlag), won the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.