Anna studied at the Royal Academy of Music and was the recipient of the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer award.
Her opera performances include Katie Mitchell’s New Dark Age at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at Drottningholms Slottsteater in Stockholm, Queen of the Night in Mozart's Magic Flute at Opera North, Handel’s Rodelinda at the Göttingen Handel Festspiel, Mozart’s Idomeneo directed by Graham Vick at Birmingham Opera Company, and roles in all three Monteverdi operas during John Eliot Gardiner’s world tour of the trilogy. She recently created the title role of Violet in Tom Coult’s debut opera, premiered at the Aldeburgh festival, and multiple roles in Sir David Pountney's Purcell Masque of Might for Opera North.
In concert she has sung with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St Luke’s in New York, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Orquestra Gulbenkian, Les Violons du Roy, Britten Sinfonia, Akademie Alte Musik Berlin and Sinfonietta Riga. She has sung Britten’s War Requiem at the Berlin Philharmonie and Thomas Ades’ Life Story, accompanied by the composer, at New York’s White Light Festival. Recent concert highlights have included performing Boulez' Pli Selon Pli with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican's centenary celebration of the composer, Bach’s Mein Herze Schwimmt im Blut with Kristian Bezuidenhout in Riga, Haydn’s Jahreszeiten with Düsseldorfer Sinfoniker under Adam Fischer, and Handel’s Orlando with the Academy of Ancient Music under Laurence Cummings.
Her numerous recordings include Elena Langer’s Landscape with Three People, the Grammy-nominated Kastalsky Requiem with the Orchestra of St Luke’s under Leonard Slatkin, two orchestral song cycles on composer Tom Coult's debut disc "Pieces that Disappear" with the BBC Philharmonic, and Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula with Early Opera Company under Christian Curnyn.
This 2025/26 season she sings the title role in a staged production of Handel's Susanna for Opera North, Thomas Ades' America (a Prophecy) with the New York Philharmonic, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra, both conducted by the composer; a programme of Mozart concert arias at the Wigmore Hall, a new orchestral song cycle with by Elena Langer with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the premiere of Tansy Davies' Passion of Mary Magdalene, and Poulenc Gloria with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
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HANDEL Susanna (Title role)
Opera North (October 2025)
Anna Dennis inhabited the title role to her fingertips. Her glorious tone gave life and substance not merely to Susanna's happy marriage but to her painful trials, so that we felt every ounce of her desperation when she was falsely accused. 'Crystal streams' was sinuously luxuriant, while defiance was tangible in her final aria, as the Elders had their comeuppance, one debagged, the other receiving a painful kick. It was a sensational performance, riveting throughout.
Opera Magazine
Anna Dennis is astonishing in the title role: so believable (especially in conveying the turmoil of an abused victim, even when her persecutors have been denounced) and delivering her arias with a gracefulness and clarity that sounds completely unforced.
Richard Morrison, The Times
As for Anna Dennis’s Susanna, it’s a terrific performance, ravishing in the gently undulating Crystal Streams and furiously steely in If guiltless blood be your intent. Her final aria, in which amid the vocal fireworks she gets to give the Elders a good kicking, is a fitting tour de force.
Clive Paget, Guardian
In every way, the jewel of the production is the title role performance by Anna Dennis. She interacts with everyone on the stage, she catches the emotions of the role in every glance and movement, and she sings with precisely tuned beauty. Her air of defiance to the randy pair, “If guiltless blood be your intent/ I here resign it all/ Fearless of death” is one of the highlights of the evening.
Robert Beale – the arts desk
The part sits largely in Anna Dennis’s lower range, so there are fewer opportunities for her bell-like high notes, but they are a joy when they come. There is warmth and straightforwardness in her singing which suits Susanna’s trajectory, and her acting during the attempted assault and following trial conveys Susanna’s great vulnerability combined with strength of character and resilience and probably makes some in the audience uncomfortable.
Catriona Graham, The Opera Critic
POULENC Gloria
Scottish Chamber Orchestra (October 2025)
Anna Dennis sang with rich, sumptuous beauty, bringing a surprising strand of vocal sexiness to a text not readily associated with sensual pleasures.
Bachtrack
BOULEZ at 100: Pli selon pli
Barbican, London (April 2025)
Dennis was splendid and Boulez’s intricacies kept tickling our ears.
Geoff Brown, The Times
Soprano Anna Dennis provided a much-needed focal point and real communicative urgency, her upper register slicing laser-like through its instrumental surrounds.
Flora Willson, The Guardian
Anna Dennis, the soprano, had the measure of the work’s enormous complexity, a feeling for its textures. Sometimes an ‘echo’ was breathtaking before the word appeared; vowels that were short, or consonants that were soft were just superbly sung. There was a sense that Dennis was shadowing the orchestra, intertwining with it.
Marc Bridle, Opera Today
Soprano Anna Dennis was the soloist, and though I’ve heard more sultry and sensuous renditions of the vocal line, I’ve never heard a more graceful and sensitive one. At the very end, when Dennis whispered the word “mort” (death) followed by an annihilating orchestral crash it felt as if the world had ended.
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
Anna Dennis sang with an exotic and hieratic allure that connected the piece back to Ravel’s settings of Mallarmé.
Peter Quantrill, BachTrack
COULT 'Pieces that Disappear'
BBC Philharmonic/Dennis/Brabbins/Gourlay/Schwarz (NMC) (November 2024)
Both Beautiful Caged Thing and the six-movement After Lassus benefit from the input of soprano Anna Dennis, especially the latter, which draws on musical fragments from the eponymous composer. Dennis’s floating, soaring lines yield moments of restrained elegance and beauty.
Gramophone
Then there’s After Lassus, again gleamingly sung by Dennis: a homage to the Renaissance composer that begins with Swingle-ish vocalisations and includes a louche cabaret-style movement. It brings to mind the way Mahler used Austrian country dances in his music, creating rootedness and a benign melancholy.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian
MOZART The Magic Flute (Queen of the Night)
Opera North (September 2024)
And Anna Dennis brings such tremulous magnetism – and such a silken middle register – to the Queen of the Night that the notorious top Fs, albeit spot-on, are practically an afterthought.
Sarah Noble – The Guardian
coloratura soprano Anna Dennis singing as she proffered a dagger to Pamina was brilliant, the top Fs spot-on in the famous “Hell’s vengeance rages”.
Richard Wilcocks, Bachtrack
Dennis brings a voice of rich resource and mastery of the ultra-high notes
Robert Beale, the arts desk
HANDEL Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Bellezza)
Buxton Festival (July 2024)
Anna Dennis is ideally cast as fragile, mercurial Beauty; beguiling of tone and of presence, she commits thoroughly to the production's conception of the character, searching out nuance in Handel's every melisma and flourish.
The Guardian
HANDEL Orlando
Academy of Ancient Music (July 2024)
The most magnetic was that ringing soprano, Anna Dennis, a commanding presence as Queen Angelica
Geoff Brown, The Times
LUIGI NONO Canti di vita e d'amore
BBC Symphony Orchestra (May 2024)
Dennis gave a masterclass in vocal manipulation and dexterity, leaping and bounding
The Times
MASQUE OF MIGHT
Opera North (October 2023)
it's Anna Dennis's shape-shifting Elena who becomes the heart of this production..her iridescent soprano and fragile, wide-eyed presence are as compelling a voice for climate action as the projected footage of felled trees and oil fires
Sarah Noble, The Guardian
RECITAL Anna Dennis / Nicholas Daniel / Mahan Esfahani
Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh (April 2023)
Dennis showed what a wonderfully accomplished and appealing baroque interpreter she is, singing arias from cantatas 199 and 210 with velvety warmth and wonderfully secure control.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian
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