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Susan Graham Mezzo-soprano

"Graham's mezzo-soprano is a voice without regrets, healthy, rounded, ineffably musical, and eager for a challenge." - New Yorker

Susan Graham, one of the world's foremost stars of opera and recital, is a compelling and versatile singing actress. She begins her season performing a favorite French work at Japan's distinguished Saito Kinen Festival: Ravel's Shéhérazade, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Celebrated as an expert in French music, Graham has been honored by the French government with the title "Commandeur dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres."

In September, she sings Mahler's Rückert-Lieder with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, and records them for the Symphony's own record label. After an October return to the Metropolitan Opera, her home company, for a signature role - Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier - Graham portrays Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Nicholas McGegan on the West Coast. Lyric Opera of Chicago welcomes her back for her first company performances in Berlioz's Damnation de Faust, in the same production she graced as Marguérite last season at the Met and in The Met: Live in HD. And, in April, she takes on a new assignment with the Houston Grand Opera - the title role in Handel's Xerxes (Serse), which features the aria "Ombra mai fu." Susan Graham closes out her season with a French program, singing Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.

Last season, Graham, a popular guest on Martha Stewart's television show, sang Berlioz in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina; Bernstein and Rorem at Carnegie Hall; Massenet in Munich and Paris; recitals in Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Vienna, and Brussels; and her first Metropolitan Opera performances as Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and as Marguérite in Berlioz's Damnation de Faust. In November, she hosts the fifth annual Opera News Awards in New York.

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