Felicity Palmer

Felicity Joan Palmer, DBE ( born April 6, 1944 in Cheltenham ) is an English opera, oratorio and lieder singer (mezzo- soprano, soprano until 1983 ).

Palmer studied from 1962 to 1967 at the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama (with emphasis oratorio and song ) and then at the Academy of Music and Theater in Munich with Marianne Sheikh. She also took classes with Vera Rozsa in London and sang in John Alldis Choir and the Purcell Consort. 1968-1969 she was a member of the King's Singers and is so far the only female member of the ensemble. In 1970 she won the first prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Fellowship and a year later had her opera debut as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at Kent Opera (before she was with Purcell's Dioclesian occurred at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London). In 1973, she was at the Houston Grand Opera, her U.S. debut with Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and in 1975 she sang for the first time with the English National Opera as Pamina in Mozart's Magic Flute. Since then she has sung at many of the major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the opera houses of Chicago and San Francisco, at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, La Scala in Milan, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bavarian State Opera (including Fricka in Wagner's Ring ), at the Opera Bastille in Paris, at the Salzburg Festival ( first 1988) and at the Glyndebourne Festival ( debut in 1985 as Florence in Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten ). In addition to the opera, they also occurs much as a concert and oratorio singer. In England, she sings a lot in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. In 2003, she played in Covent Garden the Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's " Sweeney Todd ".

Palmer is a professor at the Royal College of Music in London.

She was Commander and 2011 Lady Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.