Opera Scotland

Kathleen Wilkinson Suggest updates

Mezzo-soprano.

Kathleen Wilkinson studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and won the Webster Booth
Competition and the Peter Moores Foundation Scholarship.

She has appeared with most of the British companies. With Scottish Opera she created the roles of Margaret Muir Friend of the People (David Horne 1999) and Mary Lamb Monster! (Sally Beamish 2002). She sang several roles in the Ring - Erda Das Rheingold, First Norn Götterdämmerung, Schwertleite Die Walküre - and also some performances as Nurse and Old Woman Inés de Castro (MacMillan).

Roles at Glyndebourne include Filippyevna Eugene Onegin and Mistress Quickly Falstaff. For Glyndebourne on Tour she has sung Shepherd-boy Jenůfa, Geneviève Pelléas et Mélisande and Mrs Herring Albert Herring.

In addition to Filippyevna, roles with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden include She-Ancient in Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage, Mother Goose The Rake’s Progress, Third Maid Elektra, Brigitta Die tote Stadt and Anna Maria Stuarda.

For the English National Opera Kathleen has sung Mamma Lucia Cavalleria Rusticana, Cleaning Lady The Makropulos Case and Shepherd-boy Jenůfa.

She has also sung Filippyevna with Welsh National and at Grange Park. Other guest appearances include Opera Holland Park, Opera Ireland and the Edinburgh International Festival.

Career highlights in Europe include the Nurse and Old Woman when Scottish Opera took Inés de Castro to the Teatro Coliseo, Porto. For Opéra de Lyon she has sung La Ciesca Gianni Schicchi, Grandmother Buryjovka Jenůfa and Auntie Peter Grimes. Her first appearance with Opéra de Rennes was as Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro. She performed Erda in Das Rheingold at the Sopot International Wagner Festival, Poland. Concert work on the continent includes appearances in the Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago, Tuscany.

Kathleen has made six recordings of complete operas for the BBC. For the  Chandos ‘Opera in English’ label she recorded Kátya Kabanová and The Makropulos Case.

Conductors she has worked with include Richard Farnes, Sir Richard Armstrong, Richard Hickox, Thomas Adès, Sir Charles Mackerras, Carlo Rizzi and Sir Mark Elder.

December 2015