| Biography | Victoria Simmonds studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with David Pollard. From 2000-2005 she was a company principal at ENO singing roles including Nancy Tang/Nixon in China, Cherubino/Figaro, Zaida/The Turk in Italy, Pitti-Sing/The Mikado, Ascanius/The Trojans, Rosina/The Barber of Seville, Dorabella/Così fan tutte, Hermia/A Midsummer Nights Dream and Zerlina/Don Giovanni.
For Opera North she created the title role in Jonathan Doves highly acclaimed The Adventures of Pinocchio. She has also sung for Grange Park Opera, Garsington Opera, Opera Holland Park and the Buxton Festival and sang the title role of Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall. Abroad she has sung with the Netherlands Opera, Stuttgart and Halle Opera companies and Wellgunde/Das Rheingold with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle at the Aix Festival. In concert, she has sung in Le Comte Ory and the title role of LEnfant et les Sortilèges at the Concertgebouw, and has worked with the Philharmonia, the Hallé, the Salzburg and Edinburgh Festivals and for the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis at the BBC Proms.
Other operatic engagements include Idamante/Idomeneo for the Buxton Festival, Dorabella/Così for Opera North, Zaida/Il turco in Italia for Garsington Opera, the role of Charlotte in Massenets Werther at Les Azuralies Opera Festival as well as a new short opera by Neil Hannon based upon Tolstoys Sevastopol Sketches for Royal Opera House 2.
Victoria created the role of Marie/Angel 2 in George Benjamins Written on Skin, which has toured Aix-en-Provence, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Lisbon. The ROH performances, DVD and CD have won over 17 awards, including the Sky Arts Award for Opera in 2013. Future performances include the Lincoln Centre, New York and ROH.
Recent performances include: Through His Teeth/Luke Bedford for ROH as part of their Faustian Pack, and Fox/Cunning Little Vixen for Garsington. She created the role of Boy in The Way Back Home by Joanna Lee and Rory Mullarkey (after Oliver Jeffers), a piece devised by Katie Mitchell and Vicki Mortimer - ENOs first commission of a childrens opera. She recently sang the role of Minsk Woman in Jonathan Dove's Flight for Opera Holland Park. (July 2015) |