Mary Phillips

The American mezzo-soprano has been widely heard in Wagner, including Brangäne/Tristan und Isolde (Dallas, Winnipeg), Erda/Das Reingold (Scottish Opera), Fricka/Das Rheingold (Pittsburgh Festival Opera), and in full Ring cycles with Canadian Opera Company, Scottish Opera, and Seattle Opera. With the Metropolitan Opera she has portrayed both Rossweisse and Schwertleite/Die Walküre, Ježibaba/ Rusalka, and Mrs. Alexander/Philip Glass’s Satyagraha (company premiere). She sings Rossweisse again this spring with the Met. Her many successes encompass such varied repertoire Azucena/Il trovatore (Seattle, Phoenix), Eboli/Don Carlo (Austin, Sarasota, Toronto, Vancouver), Herodias/Salome (Edmonton), Gertrude/ Hamlet (Birmingham), Madame Larina/Eugene Onegin (Spoleto, USA), Eduige/Rodelinda (Dallas), and Sister Helen Prejean/Dead Man Walking (Austin). Phillips’s facility with contemporary works led to her New York Philharmonic debut in Michael Torke’s Four Seasons and Aaron Jay Kernis’s Garden of Light (both world premieres) and Jake Heggie’s song cycle The Starry Night at Ravinia, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, and the Library of Congress. Concert engagements include Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (New York Philharmonic) and Symphony No. 2 (Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony), and performances with the Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Philharmonia Baroque.

Lyric debut: Second Maid/Elektra (2018|19)

Last updated: February 2, 2019