Susanna Phillips

Born in Birmingham, Alabama and raised in Huntsville, Susanna Phillips made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008. She returns to the company this season in the roles of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Rosalinde in Johann Strauss, Jr.’s Die Fledermaus, and Musetta in La Bohème. She received the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Artist Award in 2010.

Ms. Phillips’s 2013-14 orchestral engagements include Fauré’s Requiem and Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the role of Ellen Orford in concert performances of Peter Grimes with the Saint Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall and in Saint Louis, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Milwaukee Symphony, and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Jacksonville Symphony. In recital, she is joined by bass-baritone Eric Owens at Chicago’s Symphony Center for a program of Schubert lieder. Chamber music engagements include performances with violist Paul Neubauer and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott in a trio concert tour that culminates at Boston’s Gardner Museum. Highlights of previous seasons include her recital debut at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall with pianist Myra Huang, her European debut as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona, and the release of Paysages, her first solo album on Bridge Records. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2012.

In 2005 Ms. Phillips won four of the world’s leading vocal competitions: Operalia, the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the MacAllister Awards, and the George London Foundation Awards Competition. She has also claimed the top honor at the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition and is a graduate of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center. Ms. Phillips returns frequently to her native state for recitals and orchestral appearances and she is co-founder of the Twickenham Fest, Alabama’s only annual summer chamber music festival, in Huntsville.

(May 2014)