Kitty Whately

MEZZO-SOPRANO

Representation: General Management

Photo: Sara Porter

Overview

Kitty studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music International Opera School. She is a passionate interpreter of song and has given many recitals including the Wigmore Hall, the Edinburgh Festival and the Oxford and Leeds Lieder Festivals. She was a winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the 59^th Overseas League, and a BBC New Generation Artist, during which time she made her debut album ‘This Other Eden’. She has worked with many of the UK orchestras, the Aix en Provence Festival and with Opera Holland Park and the Opéra National de Lorraine.

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Full Biography

Kitty Whately trained at Chetham’s School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Royal College of Music International Opera School. She won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the 59th Royal Overseas League Award in the same year, and was part of the prestigious Verbier Festival Academy where she appeared as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro and in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. Kitty was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2013-15, during which time she recorded her debut solo album This Other Eden, made recordings with the BBC orchestras, commissioned a new song cycle from Jonathan Dove, and made several appearances at the Proms.

Recent opera highlights include Isabella Wuthering Heights (Opera National de Lorraine, Nancy), Paquette in Bernstein’s Candide (Bergen National Opera, following a concert performance of the role at The Grange Festival), Mother/Other Mother in the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s latest opera Coraline at the Barbican, produced by the Royal Opera House, Dorabella Così fan tutte for Opera Holland Park, Nancy Albert Herring for The Grange Festival in the festival’s debut season, and as Hermia A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Aix-en-Provence Festival and in Beijing. Kitty also performed in the world premiere of Vasco Mendonça’s The House Taken Over directed by Katie Mitchell, with performances in Antwerp, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Bruges and Lisbon. Other operatic roles include Rosina Il barbiere di Siviglia and Stewardess in Jonathan Dove’s Flight (Opera Holland Park); Hermia A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bergen National Opera); Kate Owen Wingrave (Opéra National de Lorraine); Dorabella Così fan tutte (English Touring Opera) and Ippolita / Pallade in Cavalli’s Elena in Montpellier and Versailles for the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Kitty is in high demand as a recitalist and concert artist. She made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, singing Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as a recital alongside Malcolm Martineau at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Recent concert performances include Mahler Das Lied von der Erde at the Mizmorim Festival in Basel, The Dream of Gerontius with Crouch End Festival Chorus at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and recitals of English song at Wigmore Hall and the Salisbury International Festival. She has given performances with most of the UK’s major orchestras, including Duruflé’s Requiem and Mozart’s Requiem (in Oslo with the Dunedin Consort and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), Bach’s B Minor Mass (Royal Northern Sinfonia and Scottish Chamber Orchestra), Beethoven’s Mass in C Major (Philharmonia Orchestra), Haydn’s Nelson Mass (Britten Sinfonia on tour in Spain and the Netherlands), Bach’s Magnificat (Britten Sinfonia and Choir of King’s College Cambridge), Elgar The Dream of Gerontius at St John’s Smith Square and Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Handel Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall. Kitty has given recitals at the Edinburgh International, Salisbury International, Oxford Lieder, Leeds Lieder and Buxton festivals, working regularly with renowned accompanists including James Baillieu, Julius Drake, Graham Johnson, Simon Lepper, Malcolm Martineau, Gary Matthewman, Joseph Middleton, Anna Tilbrook and Roger Vignoles.

Kitty made her BBC Proms debut in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Suite from Act II of Caroline Mathilde, and also appeared in a Chamber Music Prom singing the music of Stephen Sondheim. Her frequent performances with the BBC orchestras include De Falla’s The Three Cornered Hat (BBC National Orchestra of Wales) and Nancy in a concert performance of Britten’s Albert Herring with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, as well as recordings of Ravel’s Sheherezade with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter with BBC Concert Orchestra.

In 2017 Kitty released her second album, Nights not spent alone, to critical acclaim. Recorded in a co-production between Champs Hill Records and the BBC, and accompanied by distinguished pianist Simon Lepper, the disc presents complete works for mezzo-soprano by Jonathan Dove. It includes a song cycle of the same name dedicated to Kitty, which she premiered at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 2015.

In the 2019-20 season, Kitty returns to English National Opera to sing Peep-Bo The Mikado, and revives her acclaimed performance as Sesto in English Touring Opera’s production of Giulio Cesare. In recital she will perform at the New Paths Music Festival in Yorkshire, and appear at the Oxford Lieder Festival alongside pianist Simon Lepper in a performance of English and American songs exploring themes of ‘myths and magic’. Kitty also makes a welcome return to the BBC Philharmonic next year to sing Beethoven’s Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II with conductor Mark Wigglesworth, marking the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.

Artist Website: www.kittywhately.com

Promoters please note: if you wish to include this biography in a concert programme etc, please contact Hazard Chase to ensure that you receive the most up to date version.
Email: Tom Wood

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Una voce poco fa

Das Lied von der Erde

Nights Not Spent Alone

News

Magic, Myths and Mortals

October 9th, 2019

Oxford Lieder Festival: HC artists perform at Sholto Kynoch’s prestigious song festival

Vaughan Williams CD

September 11th, 2019

Kitty Whately joins Roderick Williams and William Vann in world-premiere recording

Kitty Whately in Nancy

April 26th, 2019

Kitty Whately returns to the Opéra National de Lorraine, Nancy for “Wuthering Heights”

Mizmorim Festival 2019

January 15th, 2019

Kitty Whately sings Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde”

Oxford Lieder Festival 2018

October 5th, 2018

Hazard Chase artists join award winning festival

Reviews

Vaughan Williams THE SONG OF LOVE CD (Albion Records 2019)

“The mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately’s memorably affecting and delectably articulate contribution is of superlative quality and also serves to remind us that the cycle’s first performance – on December 2, 1904, at London’s Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall – was given by a contralto, Edith Clegg, with Hamilton Harty on the piano. Whately also excels in the 1897 setting of The Willow Song and enchanting Three Songs from Shakespeare.”
Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone Magazine (December 2019)

‘Whately strikes a sensitive balance between the music’s musing sensuality and the waves of more intense emotion which surface in songs like ‘Lovesight’ … (she) dispatches them with unassuming freshness.’
Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine (October 2019)

“Whately’s limpid mezzo delights in The Willow Song and the settings from Measure for Measure, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Henry VIII.”
Hugh Canning, Sunday Times (18^th August 2019)

Hermann WUTHERING HEIGHTS (Opéra National de Lorraine)

“Kitty Whately dispatched Isabell’s ditty with fine piano playing and an equally impressive mezzo”
Francis Carlin, Opera Now, July 2019

“Kitty Whately … (is) a sensitive and fervent performer, who adds much melancholy to her Act 4 aria, perhaps the most beautiful in the score.”
Michel Thomé, ResMusica, May 2019

Elgar THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS (Crouch End Festival Chorus)

“Kitty Whately’s voice is lovely – she’s a true mezzo-soprano with some powerfully sweet overtones in the upper register … her final ‘Softly and gently …’ was a model of gentle yearning, inviting the appropriate misty-eyed silence before the applause broke out.”
Barry Creasy, MusicOMH (February 2019)

Mozart COSI FAN TUTTE (Opera Holland Park)

‘Kitty Whately’s Dorabella was a strong contrast – bubbling with personality and fully mistress of both the melodramatics of “Smanie implacabili” and the insouciance of “E amore un ladroncello”.’
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph (June 2018)

‘Kitty Whately likewise proved almost infinitely capable both of sisterly affinity and dramatic disentanglement. So many attributes – sorrow and joy, honour and temptation, simplicity and complexity – were revealed as sides of the same experimental coin. Lines, unadorned or subtly ornamented, exuded both clarity and warmth.’
Mark Berry, Opera Today (June 2018)

‘As the two sisters Eleanor Dennis and Kitty Whately ideally complemented and blended with each other. […] Whately’s richly textured mezzo encompassed the playfulness and fallibility of the younger sister.’
John Johnston, Bachtrack (June 2018)

‘The sisters – Eleanor Dennis’s Fiordiligi, Kitty Whately’s Dorabella – flounce and purr as Georgian belles who could have stepped from a Gainsborough frame. […] Kitty Whately’s Dorabella finds rich hues of perplexity and darkness in the (supposedly) flightier sister’s role.’
Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk (June 2018)

‘Whately’s mezzo is more quicksilver, with its attractive vibrato and general deftness, matching her more mercurial portrayal.’
Francis Muzzo, Opera Now (July/August 2018)

Mark-Anthony Turnage – CORALINE (Royal Opera House, Barbican Theatre)

‘Kitty Whately acted it all out to perfection on stage. […] all eyes were, as they should be, on Whately, a charismatic presence as both “good” and “bad” mums.’
David Nice, The Arts Desk (5 April 2018)

‘Kitty Whately is excellent as the mother and her mirror counterpart’
Richard Fairman Financial Times (1 April 2018)

‘Kitty Whately stands out as Coraline’s real and mirror-world mother.’
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph (31 March 2018)

‘Most aptly representative of these opposing worlds is Kitty Whately as the Mother/Other Mother. Starting the opera as a patronising woman with a purposely restricted use of volume, abruptly she becomes almost unrecognisable when she embodies the deceptive Other Mother. Whately uses creepy false smiles, gradual and unexpected slow crescendos, and a jagged body language to display a bloodthirsty, unstable woman.’
Sophia Lambton, Broadway World (30 March 2018)

‘mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately is excellent in the dual role of Coraline’s mother and her increasingly psychopathic alternate version, Other Mother.’
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out (30 April 2018)

Handel – GIULIO CESARE (English Touring Opera)

‘Kitty Whately’s sparky, pugnacious Sesto was a joy throughout’
Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine (December 2017)

‘Kitty Whately is outstanding’
George Hall, The Stage (5 October 2017)

‘Kitty Whately gives impassioned accounts of Sesto’s magnificent “Cara speme” and “L’Angue offeso”.’
The Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen, (6 October 2017)

‘Whately admirably conveys the vulnerability that lurks behind Sesto’s bravado.’
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, (9 October 2017)

Albert Herring, The Grange Festival

“the young leads were even better. I’ve rarely seen a more convincing ‘romantic’ pair than Kitty Whately’s succulently sung Nancy and Timonthy Nelson’s Hunky Sid. There was an erotic charge in their every encounter”
Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine, (August 2017)

Kitty Whately & Joseph Middleton (Wigmore Hall)

“Two years on [from my last review] the timbre is just as lustrous, but stronger and more uniform. In a programme comprising English 20th-century songs (apart from one Poulenc ditty and an early Stanford), she brought a beautifully warm legato to such cherished miniatures as Vaughan Williams’s Silent Noon, Warlock’s My Own Country and Ivor Gurney’s Down By the Salley Gardens… Whately was mesmerising here.”
Richard Morrison, Financial Times (Apr 2017)

“This was a chance to experience again Kitty Whately’s winning combination of rich, even tone, superb diction and feel for the words. Each song was projected with a feeling of character and clear sense of the emotional narrative, with pianist Joseph Middleton forming a strongly characterful partner”
Planet Hugill (Apr 2017)

Mendelssohn COMPLETE SONGS, VOL. 2 (Champs Hill Records)

“The most palpable sense of delight rises from the voice of Kitty Whately whose feisty mezzo is entrusted with three impassioned songs by Mendelssohn’s sister, Fanny.”
Hilary Finch, BBC Music Magazine (October 2016)

Jonathan Dove NIGHTS NOT SPENT ALONE

The complete works for mezzo-soprano by Jonathan Dove with Kitty Whately (mezzo) and Simon Lepper (piano)

Champs Hill Records (2017)

Mendelssohn COMPLETE SONGS, VOL. 2

Malcolm Martineau (piano) with a line-up of singers including Kitty Whately, (mezzo), Paula Murrihy (mezzo), Sophie Bevan (soprano) and Benjamin Appl (baritone)

Champs Hill Records (2016)