Rowan Hellier

Mezzo-soprano

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  Scottish Mezzo Soprano Rowan Hellier is currently a member of the International Opera Studio at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden.  She studied at both the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

  Rowan recently made her debut at the Berlin Staatsoper in the role of Zweite Dame Die Zauberflöte. She has also sung Annina La Traviata for the Berlin Staatsoper, Cecilio in Mozart’s Lucio Silla for the Classical Opera Company, Dido Dido and Aeneas at the Queen’s Chapel, London, Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia for British Youth Opera, Cherubino Le Nozze di Figaro for Welsh National Opera, Sesto Giulio Cesare with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Santiago de Compostela Festival, Mercedes Carmen with Diva Opera and Haddo House Opera, and covered the roles of Dorabella Cosi fan tutte, Hänsel Hänsel und Gretel, Sesto Giulio Cesare and Kitchen Boy Rusalka for Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Whilst at the Guildhall she sang the roles of Zweite Dame, Mazet La Colombe, Balkis La Rencontre Imprevue and Lola Cavalleria Rusticana in the Barbican Hall. She has worked with leading conductors such as Laurence Cummings, Julien Salemkour, Nicholas Collon, Omer Meir Wellber, Stephen Barlow and Vladimir Jurowski.

  Rowan is an active recitalist and concert artist. She performed Elgar’s incidental music for Grania and Diarmid with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for BBC Radio 3, Judith Weir’s woman.life.song at both the Bregenz Festival (recorded for Austrian and German radio broadcast) and LSO St. Luke’s (recorded for BBC Radio 3 broadcast). She has given recitals for Opéra de Lille, the Oxford Lieder Festival singing Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, and Perth Festival of the Arts. Oratorio performances include Handel’s Messiah, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

  Recent and future engagements include the role of Hirt Tosca and Kate Pinkerton Madama Butterfly, Der Trommler Der Kaiser von Atlantis and the title role in Vanitas for the Berlin Staatsoper, including a performance at the Hamburg Staatsoper.

  Rowan Hellier is represented worldwide by Ben Rayfield at Rayfield Allied.
  This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.

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  • Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Drummer)
    Staatsoper Berlin (February 2013)

    Rowan Hellier gave a stand-out performance as the Drummer.

    Rebecca Schmid, Opera Today

    The Drummer, the almost dramatically haunting contralto Rowan Hellier, was played like a fragile action figures.

    Irene Constantin, Neues Deutschland

    [Rowan Hellier as] the singing Drummer was vocally excellent

    Udo Badelt, Der Tagesspiegel

    There was excellent support from mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier as the Drummer.

    Ingrid Wanja, Der Opernfreund

  • Carmen (Carmen Highlights), The Gannochy Trust’s 75th Birthday Concert
    Perth Concert Hall (June 2012)

    Rowan Hellier, dressed in a bright scarlet satin dress carrying a red carnation, sang the Habanera and Seguedilla simply beautifully.

    David Smythe, BachTrack

    Extracts from Bizet's Carmen, featuring superb Perth-born mezzo Rowan Hellier in the title role.

    Michael Tumelty, The Herald Scotland

  • Cecilio (Mozart’s Lucio Silla), Classical Opera Company,
    Cadogan Hall, London (March 2012)

    Rowan Hellier as Cecilio is a strongly focused, bright-hued mezzo.

    Hilary Finch, The Times

    Rowan Hellier, as Cecilio, delivered the other really excellent performance of the evening and was the singer that impressed me the most. She possesses a wide mezzo range, with a dark edge in the lower register and clear, easy high notes in the top of her voice, which she is capable of sustaining above the orchestra with remarkable ease. Her tone is warm and varied and she also displayed an elegant, delicate legato line, particularly during her final aria.

    Margarida Mota-Bull, Seen and Heard International

    [Rowan Hellier’s] mezzo…was agile, characterful and almost casually virtuosic.

    Peter Reed, Classical Source

    Rowan Hellier as the hero Cecilio...won over the audience completely with her extraordinarily warm voice, which has an astonishingly beautiful and introspective quality to it.

    Tullia Giersberg, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

  • Lucretia (The Rape of Lucretia), British Youth Opera
    (September 2011)

    And at the centre of everything, the Lucretia of the young Scottish mezzo Rowan Hellier is totally gripping, neurotically yet credibly acted, superbly sung in a rich, expressive contralto-like timbre.

    Richard Morrison, The Times

    There was a real intensity here, from the almost aggressive purity of Rowan Hellier's Lucretia

    Robert Thicknesse, Opera Now

    In the title role, Rowan Hellier switched from long-suffering devotion, to impassioned rejection of Tarquinius's demands, to all-consuming guilt, her maturing Mezzo richly expressive.

    Margaret Davies, Opera Magazine

    Sung with fierce sweetness by Hellier

    Anna Picard, The Independent

    Rowan Hellier manages the even harder feat of representing the violated Lucretia in terminal meltdown.

    George Hall, The Guardian

  • Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro)
    WNO

    ...a fine Cherubino from Rowan Hellier

    Crackerjack

    Rowan Hellier as Cherubino gave a fine performance and genuinely seemed to be enjoying all the frivolity of her role – even the masquerade

    Primi Divi

  • Oxford Lieder Festival
    (October 2009)

    Hellier’s sublime performance of Brahms’s famous lullaby was a highlight...Hellier demonstrated both vocal and dramatic prowess to give compelling accounts of these songs

    The Oxford Times

  • woman.life.song (by Judith Weir)
    Barbican

    sung with a real sense of celebration by Rowan Hellier

    The Independent

• Photos

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    Photographer credit: Eric Richmond Photography

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  • 
    Photographer credit: Eric Richmond Photography

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  • 
    Photographer credit: Eric Richmond Photography

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  • 
    Photographer credit: Eric Richmond Photography

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