Vivien Shotwell makes her LAO debut as the Second Lady in The Magic Flute.
Praised for her “extremely attractive and extremely large voice” (Berkshire Review for the Arts), Vivien Shotwell recently made her debut as Fricka in Die Walküre with the Miami Music Festival.
Her engagements for the 2019/20 season include Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with James Conlon and the RAI Symphony Orchestra (Torino, Italy), as well as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with Wichita Grand Opera.
She received her Artist Diploma in opera from the Yale School of Music, where she performed Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi under the baton of Speranza Scappucci. Also at Yale, she sang the title role in The Rape of Lucretia, for which she was described by the Hartford Courant as being “filled with intensities… like the ringing of a haunted bell.”
She was an Emerging Artist with Calgary Opera, where she performed Béatrice in Béatrice et Bénédict. Other roles include Ottone in L’incoronazione di Poppea, Dido in Dido and Aeneas, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, the Third Lady in The Magic Flute and the title role in Giulio Cesare, which she has performed four times.
Her concert repertoire includes Handel’s Messiah and Israel in Egypt, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Rückertlieder, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and The Music Makers, Mozart’s Requiem, and Copland’s In the Beginning.
She has received grants from Early Music America and the Canada Council for the Arts, and was twice a Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. At Yale she was awarded the David L. Kasdon Memorial Prize and the Phyllis Curtin Career Entry Prize. When not singing, she enjoys writing, and is the author of a historical novel, Vienna Nocturne (Random House, 2014), about a soprano who loved Mozart, which has been translated into seven languages. A dual Canadian-American citizen, she was born in Colorado and divides her time between Halifax and Montreal.
(VivienShotwell.com)
