Sarah Walker

Key details:

Department:
Music | Vocal Studies
Role:
Vocal Performance Consultant

Sarah Walker is an artist of international standing both on the opera stage and on the concert platform worldwide. Having initially studied violin at the Royal College of Music, she subsequently began taking vocal lessons with the celebrated Hungarian teacher Madame Vera Rozsa, with whom she built an extraordinarily wide repertoire ranging from Bach and the Baroque to 20th century composers such as Berio, Boulez, Cage, Henze, Ligeti, Copland and Ives.

Since her debut at Glyndebourne as Diana/Giove in Cavalli’s La Calisto she has sung in opera houses all over the world including the Royal Opera House, where she made her debut as Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther opposite Alfredo Kraus, the New York Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Vienna Staatsoper, Le Châtelet in Paris and in Geneva, Brussels, Hamburg, Munich, Chicago, San Francisco, Lisbon, Madrid and many others.

Among more than 70 roles in her repertoire are Didon, Maria Stuarda, Fricka, Klytämnestra, Dorabella, Donna Elvira, Katisha, Mistress Quickly, numerous Handel and Monteverdi heroines and the title role in Britten’s Gloriana, now available on DVD. She took the role of the Marquise de Berkenfeld in Pavarotti’s 60th birthday performances of Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment at the Met. On the concert platform Sarah has worked with conductors including Solti, Kleiber, Norrington, Masur, Rattle, Eliot Gardiner, Muti, Harnoncourt, Mackerras, Rozdestvensky and Haitink. She was a memorable Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and took part in the performance of Beethoven’s 9th, conducted by the late Leonard Bernstein in Berlin, given to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall at Christmas in 1989.

Sarah has achieved perhaps her greatest critical acclaim on the recital platform where she has formed close partnerships with Graham Johnson, Roger Vignoles and Malcolm Martineau. Since the overwhelming success of her Wigmore Hall debut, she has given numerous concerts all over the world and has made over 50 recordings, reflecting her enormous repertoire and her artistry.