Amelia Watkins: Biography

Quickly gaining a reputation for her beautiful fluid top register and dramatic flair, Canadian soprano Amelia Watkins has performed with leading orchestras and opera companies in the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe.

She has recently appeared in such prestigious venues as the Estates Theatre (National Theatre, Prague), the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, Weill Hall, Lincoln Centre, the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Verbier Festival (Switzerland), the Gewandhaus (Germany), and in concert in Hong Kong. Opera News raved about her recent performance as Zerlina at the Brooklyn Academy of Music: 'Watkins's down- to-earth, irresistible Zerlina provided the major vocal pleasure of the evening - a rich, glowing lyric sound destined for the heights".

Ms. Watkins has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival, a Young Artist at Berkshire Opera, a featured academy artist at the Verbier Festival, a participant of the Cleveland Art Song Festival, a resident performer with the Metropolitan Opera Guild outreach program, and was one of 6 singers selected for the 2006 Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop featuring bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff.

A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Amelia is a current and past recipient of substantial grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Jacqueline Desmarais Foundation for Young Canadian Opera Singers, and is a laureate of the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques. She is the winner of the Deuxième Prix Lyrique Français at the Concours d'interpretation de Musique Française de Montréal, runner-up winner in the 2001 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, and has been recognized in other regional, national and international competitions. Amelia can be heard in recording on Albany Records, as well as with the MDR symphony in the premiere of German composer Manfred Trojahn's Requiem, on the new Bobby McFerrin recording of choral music for solo singers, and in various film and television scores.