Rachel Nicholls

Rachel Nicholls is an English soprano in opera and concert.

Career

Born in Bedford, England, Nicholls studied French at the University of York, and from 1998 voice at the Royal College of Music with Kathleen Livingstone.^[1][2] In 2001, she won second prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Competition.^[3][4] She has collaborated with conductors such as Andrew Davis, Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Richard Hickox, Jean-Claude Malgoire and Simon Rattle, and with orchestras such as the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Philharmonia Orchestra.^[5] She is a voice teacher at the University of York,^[1] and the University of Huddersfield. Nicholls now studies with the Wagnerian soprano Dame Anne Evans.

Opera

Nicholls made her debut with the The Royal Opera in London as the Third Flowermaiden in Wagner's Parsifal.^[6] She returmed to Covent Garden to sing Prilepa in Tchaikowsky's Queen of Spades, Pepik in Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen and Echo in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. For English Touring Opera she performed the title role of Francesco Cavalli's Erismena, Elisa in Handel's Tolomeo, and Ginevra in Handel's Ariodante. She sang Armida in Handel's Rinaldo at the Edinburgh Festival and Fiordilligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte for La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire. She performed First Woman – First Fury in Birtwhistle's The Mask of Orpheus: The Arches at the BBC Proms, Nerone in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea at the New Theatre, Tokyo, Tatyana in Tchaikowsky's Eugene Onegin for Scottish Opera, Jenifer in Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre and Anne Trulove in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the St Endellion Festival.^[1] In 2012, she performed the part of Brünnhilde in Wagner's Ring cycle at the Longborough Festival Opera.^[2] Fiona Maddocks reviewed Götterdämmerung in The Observer: "Longborough has found a magnificent Brünnhilde in Rachel Nicholls, a singer so versatile that she has also had a career as a Bach specialist. Full-toned, flexible, accurate and powerful, every gesture, every flinch is persuasive."^[7]

Concert

Nicholls has performed with Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Darmstadt Hofkapelle, Florilegium, the Gdansk Music Festival, the Hanover Band, Huddersfield Choral Society, the London Handel Players, the London Mozart Players, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mikkeli City Orchestra, the Orchestra of St John’s, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Le Parlement de Musique, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as at the Brighton, Chelsea, Fishguard, London Handel and Three Choirs Festivals. She has appeared in both the Valparaiso University and Carnegie Hall, New York, in Bach's Mass in B minor, performed by the Bach Collegium Japan, conducted by Masaaki Suzuki, commemorating the Fukushima disaster.^[8][9]

Recordings

Nicholls has performed in the field of historically informed performance in recordings conducted by Suzuki of Bach's cantatas,^[6] including the cantata Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen, BWV 32, acting as the Soul in dialogue with Jesus,^[5] which ends "with the two voices together in a gavotte, a clear Lutheran analogy to a love duet".^[10] In a 2007 recording of Bach's Mass in B minor, conducted by Suzuki, she appears with Carolyn Sampson, Robin Blaze, Gerd Türk and Peter Kooy.^[11][12]

References

External links

• Rachel Nicholls website
• Rachel Nicholls James Black Management
• Rachel Nicholls: "No-one ever tells you you're ready to sing Wagner - you have to dare to try for yourself.” the-wagnerian.com 25 July 2012