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Biography |
by Joseph Stevenson
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Sophie Koch is a French soprano who in the late 1990s started to establish a career in leading opera houses as a lyric mezzo-soprano. She is particularly suited to trouser roles.
She studied at the Paris Conservatory with the great singer Jane Berbié. She graduated with a First Prize and then won the top prize in the 's Hertogenbosch Competition.
She began her singing career in France and in the 1997-1998 season debuted as Rosina in The Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. She followed that up in the role of Dorabella in Così fan tutte. (Both operas were conducted by Sir Colin Davis).
She has also sung in the Vienna Festwochen, the Bastille Opera in Paris, Dresden's Semperoper, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala in Milan, and La Monnaie in Brussels.
Koch has a very large repertory. It includes not only standards such as Hansel und Gretel, Il Barbieri di Siviglia, Zauberflöte, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Werther, Faust, Verdi's Falstaff, and Don Carlos, but also early operas such as L'Incoronazione de Poppea, La Favola d'Orfeo, Dido and Aeneas, and Ascanio. Her twentieth-century repertory includes Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges and Fiery Angel, Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortileges, and L'Heure Espagnole, and Laurent Petitgirard's Elephant Man.
She sings concert and oratorio performances of such works as the Bach's Magnificat, B minor Mass, and St. Matthew Passion, Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ, Franck's Les Béatitudes, and Honegger's Judith.
As already noted, she excels in travesti roles, including Prince Orlovsky in Fledermaus, Octavian in Rosenkavalier, The Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, Mozart's Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Niklausse in Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and others. |
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