Opera Scotland

Susan Gritton Suggest updates

English soprano.

Winner of the 1994 Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Prize, Susan Gritton read botany at Oxford and London Universities before taking up a career in singing.

Her operatic engagements have included Liù, Micaëla, Mařenka and Ismene in Mitridate, rè di Ponto for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. At the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, she has sung roles by Mozart (Konstanze, Fiordiligi, Vitellia), and Handel (Romilda in Xerxes, Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare, the title role in Rodelinda) and Blanche in Dialogues des Carmélites. She has performed Donna Anna for the Opéra de Montréal and in concert for the SCO, and Ellen Orford in Sydney. Roles at the Glyndebourne Festival include Susanna, Zerlina and the title role in Theodora.

Her many roles at English National Opera have included Countess Almaviva, Pamina, Fiordiligi and the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen. Other appearances have included the Governess in The Turn of the Screw and Blanche in Dialogues des Carmélites at Aldeburgh; Marzelline for Rome Opera; Tytania for Teatro la Fenice, Venice and Fiordiligi at the Mostly Mozart Festival, New York. She has also sung in innovative staged performances of Sibelius’ Luonnotar in London; Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher in Rome and Messiah in Vienna.

She has also sung Countess Madeleine in Capriccio at Grange Park. Other engagements include Konstanze at the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin; Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia at the Aldeburgh Festival and Ellen Orford in Tokyo and at La Scala, Milan.

She appears regularly in concert with many of the world’s great orchestras and conductors and her recent engagements have included the Berlin Philharmonic with Rattle and Norrington, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Pappano, the LSO with Harding, the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Bruggen, the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Haitink, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Mackerras, the New York Philharmonic with Sir Colin Davis, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with Tate, and the Philharmonia with Sir Andrew Davis.

A regular recitalist, her appearances include the Wigmore Hall with Graham Johnson and the Lincoln Centre in New York with Eugene Asti. She has recorded songs by Britten, Medtner, Schubert, Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann.

Her recordings include Handel’s Saul, Solomon, Theodora, Messiah, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato and The Choice of Hercules. as well as the roles of Mařenka (nominated for a Grammy Award); Elena (Paride ed Elena); Hero (Béatrice et Bénédict); Nannetta (Falstaff); Tiny (Paul Bunyan) and Miss Wordsworth (Albert Herring). Concert works on record include the Requiems by Brahms and Mozart, and Masses by Haydn, Hummel and Schubert.