Vivien SHOTWELL

mezzo-soprano

Praised for her “extremely attractive and extremely large voice” and “moving and musicianly” singing (Berkshire Review for the Arts), and for being “filled with intensities” (Hartford Courant), Vivien Shotwell recently made her debut as Fricka in Die Walküre with the Miami Music Festival. She received her Artist Diploma in voice from the Yale School of Music, where she performed the title role in The Rape of Lucretia and Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and where she was awarded the David L. Kasdon Memorial Prize and the Phyllis Curtin Career Entry Prize. She was an Emerging Artist with Calgary Opera, where she performed Béatrice in Béatrice et Bénédict. Other roles include Dido in Dido and Aeneas, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, the Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte, and the title role in Giulio Cesare, which she has performed four times. Her concert repertoire includes Handel’s Messiahand Israel in Egypt, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Rückert-Lieder, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and The Music Makers, Mozart’s Requiem, and Copland’s In the Beginning. As a soloist she has appeared with Symphoria, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, the Georgetown Chorale, and Orchestra New England. She has received grants from Early Music America, the Nova Scotia Talent Trust, and the Canada Council for the Arts, and was twice a Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She studied early music with Michael Chance and Jill Feldman at The Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and received highest honors in music from Williams College. When not singing, she enjoys writing fiction, and is the author of a historical novel, Vienna Nocturne (Random House, 2014), about an English soprano who loved Mozart, which has been translated into seven languages. A dual American-Canadian citizen, she divides her time between Halifax and Montreal.