©Photo: Gillian Riesen

©Photo: James Glossop

©Photo: Gillian Riesen

Laura Wilde

Soprano

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“possessing particularly rich tone, a high musical style and an elegant stage bearing”
(Opera Mag Jun 2018)

Possessed of “a ravishingly beautiful sound” (Opera News), young American soprano Laura Wilde is already becoming an artist in demand in the Jugendlich dramatischer repertoire with recent debuts in the title roles in Jenůfa in David Alden’s production at both English National Opera and Santa Fe Opera, Katya Kabanova in Stephen Lawless’ new production for Scottish Opera, and as both Agathe in Der Freischütz and Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte for Staatstheater Stuttgart.

This season, Laura returns to Stuttgart as Agathe and also her first Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust under Marc Soustrot, and sings her first Sieglinde alongside Freia and Third Norn in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ring Cycle under Sir Andrew Davis. Laura also joins Davis for concert performances as Gretel in Humperdinck’s beloved Hänsel und Gretel with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra following her debut in the same role at the Edinburgh International Festival. Future projects include her first Donna Anna in the US.

A 2016 recipient of the Sara Tucker Study Grant, Laura is a graduate of The Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she performed as Kate Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly), Marianne Leitmetzer (Der Rosenkavalier), and Anna (Nabucco), and subsequently made her first foray into the Wagnerian repertoire as a Flower Maiden (Parsifal), and in David Pountney’s Ring Cycle as Freia (Das Rheingold) and Ortlinde (Die Walküre). Further roles added to her repertoire whilst at the Center include Contessa Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Hanna (The Merry Widow), Countess (Capriccio) and Foreign Princess (Rusalka).

Elsewhere in the US, recent highlights include her debut at Dallas Opera as Laura in Korngold’s Der Ring des Polykrates under Emmanuel Villaume, her first Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito) for Opera Theatre of St Louis, the role of Lucy in Grant Park Music Festival’s concert performance of Menotti’s The Telephone, Micaëla (Carmen) for Nashville Opera, and the creation of the role of Jane Withersteen in the world premiere of Riders of the Purple Sage for Arizona Opera. Laura returns to Arizona in another world premiere this season, creating the role of Mamah Cheney in Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow, conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya.

Laura was a Semi-Finalist at the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, was twice awarded the Elihu Hyndman Memorial Award by St Louis, and has most recently been awarded The Mabel Dorn Reeder Foundation Prize, also by St Louis.

Originally from South Dakota, Wilde’s love of music began with the trumpet and developed into voice; she is a graduate of Indiana University.

Gallery

Meet Laura Wilde © Richard Tucker Foundation

Dvořák: Ciganske melodie No.5 © Laura Wilde

Dvořák: Ciganske melodie No.6 © Laura Wilde

Brahms: Ophelia Lieder © Laura Wilde

Dvořák: Ciganske melodie No.3 © Laura Wilde

“Laura Wilde as Jenůfa, whose fine, rich, dynamically flexible voice found such favour when she led English National Opera’s 2016 revival.”

(Opera Magazine, November 2019)

“The American soprano Laura Wilde’s Kátya, making a striking house debut, is outwardly meek, bewildered, the girl in the mumsy frock. Inwardly she’s an eruption of desire and guilt. It’s a telling, sympathetic reading.”

(The Guardian, Fiona Maddocks, March 2019)

“In the punishing role [of Katya], Wilde’s bright attractive soprano convincingly conveyed innocence, unhappiness, joy, desperation and deep anguish.”

(Bachtrack, March 2019)

“Laura Wilde was a big-voiced radiant Gretel”

(Neil Fisher, The Times, August 2018)

“The spinto soprano Laura Wilde was his wife Laura, possessing particularly rich tone, a high musical style and an elegant stage bearing.”

(Opera Magazine, June 2018)

“Laura Wilde’s soprano blooms beautifully in the upper range”

(Dallas News, February 2018)

“He also has a beautiful young wife, Laura, played with both tenderness and steel by the Wagnerian soprano Laura Wilde.”

(Theater Jones, February 2018)

“Laura Wilde’s Vitellia had a hot core of tone and admirable vocal agility and nuance”

(Opera Magazine, August 2017)

“The director has been gifted with a cast that is nigh unto perfection. As Vitellia, Laura Wilde seems well on her way to becoming the Mozart soprano of choice. Her creamy, evenly produced tone had outstanding presence in every register and she coloured it beautifully to reflect her changing moods…Ms Wilde is also highly adept at executing the florid writing and ornamentations…Her dramatic gifts equal her splendid instrument, most especially her deft, subtle comic timing.”

(Opera Today, June 2017)

“Laura Wilde sings a strong, splendid Vitellia. She makes this woman enticing and flirtatious as well as vengeful.”

(Broadway World, June 2017)

“The rest of Wotan’s clan included the fresh-voiced soprano (and Ryan Opera Center alumna) Laura Wilde as Freia”

(Chicago Tribune, October 2016)

“After applauding Laura Wilde’s outstanding portrayal of Jenůfa, I consulted the programme to find that she is in her final year as a participant in the young artists’ programme at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and that this was her ENO and European debut. She gave a commanding performance vocally, producing a pure soprano sound with which she was able to ride over the hefty orchestra and yet also to shape some delicate piano and pianissimo phrases. Dramatically she was always the uncomfortable stepdaughter – vulnerable, wilful, uncomprehending, disappointed.”

(Opera Magazine, September 2016)

“Wilde, making her European debut, is quite a find, a warm-voiced soprano with real lustre in her tone, and a deeply affecting, if finely understated, actress: Jenůfa’s numbed grief for her dead baby tears you in two, as it should.”

(The Guardian, Tim Ashley, June 2016)

“…with wonderful colours in her voice she is deeply affecting as the village girl whose baby is murdered by her stepmother…”

(The Telegraph, John Allison, June 2016)

“Throughout, her delivery and body language are truthful, her upper register flawlessly radiant.”

(The Arts Desk, June 2016)

“Laura Wilde’s empowered lyricism helps lift Jenůfa out of the painful trials that beset her into wisdom and maturity.”

(The Stage, George Hall, June 2016)

“Among the first selections of the evening the aria “Ain’t it a pretty night” from Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah was sung by Laura Wilde. Ms. Wilde’s interpretation showed excellent technique at appropriate emphatic moments…Her character’s wistful yearning “to be one of them folks myself” who are beyond the mountains, was equally touching”

(Salvatore Calomino, Opera Today, May 2015)