Allison Cook

Mezzo-soprano

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“A tour de force, brilliantly sung and stunning in its psychological breadth.”
(Opera Magazine)

Allison Cook’s reputation as one of today’s foremost exponents of contemporary and 20^th century repertoire has been firmly established through the recent creation of a range of formidable characters. Dramatic versatility and an extensive vocal range have shaped a unique career which incorporates both mezzo and soprano roles including Judith (Bluebeard’s Castle), Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw), Salome, Marie (Wozzeck), Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Saariaho’s Émilie. This season Allison adds two significant new roles to her repertoire; Foreign Princess (Rusalka) for Bergen National Opera under Eivind Gullberg Jensen, and Venus (Tannhäuser) for Opernhaus Wuppertal under Patrick Hahn.

The past season included Allison’s return to The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden under Thomas Adès in the first ever staging of Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Underground as well as world premiere performances of Errollyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost with the Dunedin Consort at the Barbican and Edinburgh International Festival. Other recent highlights include Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle at the Enescu Festival under Cristian Mandeal, Saariaho’s Émilie Suite with Gävle Symphony Orchestra and her return to Teatro alla Scala as the Marquise de Merteuil in Luca Francesconi’s Quartett. The Marquise in particular has earned Cook unanimous acclaim, from her world premiere performances at La Scala to subsequent productions at Gran Teatre del Liceu, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Teatr Wielki, Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, as well as at Wiener Festwochen, La Cité de la Musique, and both the Holland and Strasbourg Festivals. Finding an equally special place in her repertoire is the role of the Duchess in Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face, which has brought tour-de-force debuts in New York, Québec, Warsaw and Brussels.

Other significant highlights have included Allison’s role debut as Salome in Adina Jacobs’ new production for English National Opera, garnering Allison praise for her committed performance and “gleaming tone” (Opera Magazine), the world-premiere of Casablancas’ L’Enigma De Lea for Gran Teatre del Liceu – a piece she reprises this season with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Miss Jessel in Kasper Holten’s The Turn of the Screw for Teatro alla Scala conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, Judith in Mariusz Treliński’s pivotal production of Bluebeard’s Castle for Teatr Wielki, and Allison’s debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in The Diary of One Who Disappeared. At the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Cook has appeared in Wozzeck, Turnage’s Anna Nicole and in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s new production of Janáček’s From the House of the Dead.

Gallery

Casablancas: L’Enigma di Lea (excerpt) © Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona

Casablancas: L’Enigma di Lea (duet) © Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona

Schoenberg: Erwartung (excerpt) © Den Nye Opera

Francesconi: Quartett (excerpt) © Casa da Musica

Kaija Saariaho: Émilie (excerpts) © Salzburger Landestheater

“It’s up to the singers to project personality, and Allison Cook (a bright, power-dressed Lavinia/Spirit) certainly does that.”

(The Telegraph, June 2021)

“The interpreters of the original production return and are masterful in their roles, mezzo Allison Cook as the Marquise de Merteuil and baritone Robin Adams as the Vicomte de Valmont. Both were amazing, their voices using all possible registers and techniques, from the passionate to the declamatory up to the coloratura…”

(Renato Verga, Bachtrack, October 2019)

“Casablancas’s opera found an excellent interpreter in Allison Cook as Lea, untroubled by the sometimes high tessitura”

(Opera Magazine, May 2019)

“[…] here rendered with intensity by the outstanding mezzo soprano Allison Cook, the very high spiraling vocal writing projected thrillingly, her expertise in contemporary opera evident through her balance of complex vocal lines with effective, alluring stage action.”

(Musical Opinion Quarterly, April – June 2019)

“Allison Cook knew how to understand Casablancas’ music and produced a pure, translucent tone. He composed a character who experiences pain to ecstasy, through struggle and love to the other, expressed in a line of sensual singing on an axis that goes from modal to diatonism. The result was delicious and captivating.”

(Bachtrack, February 2019)

“Mezzo soprano Allison Cook excelled in the demanding role of Lea both in the dramatic aspect as well as in her ease of projection and employing a timbre endowed with an ethereal quality.”

(La Platea, February 2019)

“her lower range had real strength, and her gleaming tone served her music well [as Salome]”

(Opera Magazine, Erica Jeal, December 2018)

“He’s finely matched by Allison Cook – the ENO’s most recent Salome – as his wife/mother who also doubles as Eddy’s sister and one half of the sphynx. A fine soprano with excellent diction, she manages to make you care in the extended ‘love’ duets, which is no mean feat. She’s also a lot of fun in any number of comic cameos.”

(Limelight Magazine, December 2018)

“Allison Cook gives a totally committed performance in the title-role, keeping her nerve with steely assurance to sing with great skill and security.”

(Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, September 2018)

“Where she stood out was with the colour and drama of the voice; imperious and enticing in her dealings with Narraboth, desperate and fiery with Jochanaan, cold and forceful with Herod. Her final scene was compellingly delivered, sung with dramatic intelligence and entranced passion”

(Bachtrack, September 2018)

“Allison Cook looks ideally the modern, young Salome this production requires and gives everything she has. A mezzo in what is nominally a soprano role, she sings with unusually dark colours, and a clean, rapier-like top.”

(Financial Times, October 2018)

“She’s a fine vocal actor, immersing herself in the role with admirable commitment and abandon.”

(The Guardian, October 2018)

“Cook is a mesmerising singer-actor who never lacks intensity or intelligence.”

(The Times, October 2018)

“Cook’s light and girlish soprano contrasts nicely with Soar’s sonorous bass, and her alternating lust and disgust is radiantly amplified instrumentally by the orchestra under Martyn Brabbins’s direction.”

(Independent, October 2018)

“Allison Cook, looking impressively cool and gym-toned in figure-hugging, occasionally discarded, costumes, brilliantly emanates Salome’s frigid and repellent sexuality and is heroically athletic.”

(Classical Source, October 2018)

“Allison Cook as Eddy’s wife (and mother) especially touching in her lament for her dead husband, sung stepping over and around his corpse.”

(Bachtrack, February 2018)

“Susan Bullock and Allison Cook gave virtuoso performances in the chameleon-like soprano roles – both singers blurring the lines between humanity and caricature”

(Opera Magazine, October 2017)

“But then there was Allison Cook as Eddy’s wife and (it transpires) mother, singing with a smoky, curdled sensuality that could veer into either brutality or passion.”

(The Spectator, August 2017)

“Allison Cook as Eddy’s real mum and lover whose aria lamenting the death of her abusive husband was matchless”

(Classical Source, August 2017)

“The two soloists fully assume the requirement of writing…it is first of all the astonishing performance of Allison Cook as the Marquise that will be remembered, passing from one hallucination to another at will, with pyrotechnics as much musical as they were psychic.”

(Anaclase, March 2017)

“The Marquise de Merteuil was performed by the mezzo soprano Allison Cook; unmatchable on stage and delivering a vocal performance which proved most convincing.”

(Beckmesser, February 2017)

“Allison Cook [was] spellbinding as Miss Jessel.”

(Opera Magazine, December 2016)

“Allison Cook also gives a tour de force performance. It’s not so much that she portrays the Duchess, rather she reincarnates her. First as a playful sex-goddess, then as a fallen angel. With a final number as gripping as the best bel canto aria.”

(Koen Van Boxem, Tijd, September 2015)

“Allison Cook’s portrayal of the Duchess – a triumph in one of the New York City Opera’s last productions – remains a tour de force, brilliantly sung and stunning in its psychological breadth.”

(George Loomis, Opera Magazine, August 2015)

“Baritone Robin Adams and mezzo Allison Cook are formidable singers and actors. Cook is also the sexiest woman ever seen on an opera stage in a while, to the point that the question of how the performance of this opera could go on without her is inevitable.”

(Federico Monjeau, Clarin, June 2015)