MEET THE SOLOIST: Annie Rosen, mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen performs Handel's Messiah
December 12, 2021 at 3PM

Background: Rosen was a 2012 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions semifinalist. She holds additional awards from the Gerda Lissner Foundation, the Santa Fe Opera and Central City Opera, and the Connecticut Opera Guild. She is a recipient of the Shoshana Foundation's Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts from Yale College. Her apprenticeships included the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Lyric Opera of Chicago. A New Haven, CT native, Rosen earned degrees in musicology and performance from Yale University and Mannes College.

Highlights:

• On the concert stage, Rosen enjoys a relationship with the New York Festival of Song, with whom she most recently performed as a guest alumna at Wolf Trap Opera in a tribute to Steven Blier. She was a founding member of the New York City-based chamber ensemble Cantata Profana, with whom she has performed Berio's Folk Songs, Ligeti's Nouvelles aventures, and Thomas Adès' Life Story. Some of her other recital repertoire has included chants of Hildegard von Bingen, Handel solo cantatas, song cycles by Berlioz and Shostakovich, and world premieres of Hindi and Farsi songs by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail. She is a 2021 semifinalist in the postponed Naumburg Vocal Competition for recitalists.
• An aficionado of new and experimental work, Ms. Rosen joined the Lyric Opera of Kansas City's Explorations series in 2019 to present a fully staged version of Sarah Kirkland Snider's one-woman song cycle Penelope. Other fringe work has included a collaboration with L.A.-based director Annie Saunders and the International Contemporary Ensemble to help create The Wreck, a site-specific devised opera based on the poetry of Anne Sexton and the compositions of Mariana Sadovska; a fully staged interpretation of Gyorgy Kurtag's Kafka Fragments for solo voice and solo violin in New York City, which OperaNews hailed as “a flat-out triumph for its two fearless performers"; and a collaboration with the Hong Kong Ballet in Kurt Weill's Die Sieben Todsünden. 
• Last season, Rosen made her debut live and in HD at The Metropolitan Opera as Ankhesenpaaten/Akhnaten, debuted with Calgary Opera as Adalgisa/Norma, and appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Hall. Her last engagement of the season, Wellgunde in Wagner's complete Ring cycle with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, was canceled due to COVID-19. 

Critical Praise:

• "Annie Rosen gave a marvelous performance, particularly in the Handel, one I shall long remember and cherish. I was impressed with her dramatic range as a singer. While most notable in the classical repertoire, she also gave a very convincing homage to the singing style of Joan Baez in “The Silver Dagger.” Opera News
• "Soprano Diana Newman and mezzo Annie Rosen, first-year Ryan Opera Center members of bright promise, had a ball with the comic shtick the director gave the silly stepsisters." Chicago Tribune

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