ELIZABETH ROBERTS
Elizabeth Roberts studied Music at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where she won the David Barlow Memorial Award. She specialised in performance, appearing as a soloist in many choral concerts and also giving many solo recitals. She now studies with Lillian Watson and Colin Baldy and has also worked in masterclasses with David Wilson-Johnson (working in detail on Anne Trulove, The Rake’s Progress), Penelope Mackay and Nicoletta Conti. Elizabeth has recently completed English National Opera’s Baylis Programme performance training course, The Knack, working on Stanislavsky Method acting and textual analysis skills with Rufus Norris; dance and movement with Leah Hausman and Maxine Braham; and vocal skills with Mary King.
Solo concert engagements have ranged from Haydn’s Stabat Mater and Purcell’s Te Deum & Jubilate in D at Truro Cathedral, Mozart’s Solemn Vespers and Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610– both in Oxford – through works by Rutter, Fauré, Rameau, Lully, Bononcini, Charpentier and many others from Newcastle to Tunbridge Wells and throughout the UK, including Mozart’s Requiem at St John’s Smith Square, London; Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Montgomeryshire Music Festival, in Cambridge and in Worthing. In the opening concert of the Newcastle Early Music Festival she took the role of Merab in Handel’s Saul. At the closing of the Ribchester Festival she sang Mozart’s Missa Brevis K192 and Church Cantatas for Soprano, Strings & Organ: ‘Kommet her, ihr frechen Sünder’ & ‘Ergo interest … Quaere superna’ with the English Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Partington; and for the Bromley Summer Choral Festival she sang Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, conducted by Adrian Brown. Other engagements have been Haydn’s Creation in Buxted for the BT Help the Hospices Appeal, with Witham Choral Society and with Dudley Choral Society; Mozart’s Coronation Mass; Bach’s Magnificat and his Cantata No. 61 in Leamington Spa and Bakewell; Schubert’s Mass in G and Richard Blackford’s Mirror of Perfection in Reading. Elizabeth was also Guest Artist in 2002 with the Scarborough Spa Orchestra in the Spa Grand Hall for a Viennese evening and a gala concert. Most recently, Elizabeth sang Bach’s Cantata 68 and Mass in A with Colchester Bach Choir; Carmina Burana with Teddington Choral Society; and Fauré’s Requiem and Christopher Le Fleming’s Five Psalms with Doncaster Choral Society.
Her operatic roles include Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in the Orangery at Kenwood, conducted by Howard Williams; First Bridesmaid, Le Nozze di Figaro conducted by Cem Mansur, and A Geisha, Iris conducted by John Gibbons, both directed by Tom Hawkes for Opera Holland Park; Musetta, La Bohème; Belinda, Dido & Aeneas; and roles from Offenbach and Gilbert & Sullivan. She recently gave a concert performance of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore (Adina) with the Kingston Philharmonia. She took the role of Hilary Belle-Bottomley in the premiere performances of On Thee We Feed by Richard Chew and Rufus Norris, conducted by Jonathan Gill and directed by Rupert Goold. For First Act Opera International, she has taken the roles of Susanna, Le Nozze di Figaro; Zerlina, Don Giovanni; and Clorinda, La Cenerentola conducted by Ken Roberts and Alistair Dawes and directed by Fraser Grant. Most recently, she has been performing as Despina, Così fan tutte for Starlight Opera in Guildford and Oxted.
