"A glowing musical central figure … [Graham] has aristocratic musical and vocal qualities that set her apart from other singers." - Opera News Susan Graham, one of today's foremost opera stars, is a versatile and compelling singing actress with a devoted international audience. A dedicated Francophile and expert in French music, decorated by the French government as a "Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres," Ms. Graham devotes her current season almost exclusively to French repertoire. It ranges from the original 1779 version of Gluck's tragic opera Iphigénie en Tauride to Ravel's Shéhérazade, via three great Berlioz works: La mort de Cléopâtre, Les nuits d'été, and L'enfance du Christ. Susan Graham has sung leading roles from the Baroque and Classical to contemporary creations in the great opera houses of the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala Milan, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Dresden's Semperoper, and at the Salzburg Festival, and she has appeared with most of the world's leading conductors and orchestras. In great demand at home and abroad, the Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano enchants audiences with her expressive voice, her natural, engaging acting ability in both comedy and tragedy, and with her tall and graceful stature. A cover article in Gramophone magazine dubbed her "America's favorite mezzo." A leading participant in the international Gluck revival, Ms. Graham opens her 2007-08 season singing the title part in Iphigénie en Tauride on opening night at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. This is the third of the three companies that jointly produced the Iphigénie staging in which she sang last season with Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera - performances greeted with unequivocal critical praise. The Chicago Tribune stated: "Graham put her own stamp on the part, bringing both nobility and vibrant vocal beauty to her affecting performance. She made something real of the high priestess' tragic dilemma, caught between enforced duty and her own conscience, victimized by mortals and gods alike." This season Ms. Graham also gives important concerts and recitals at home and abroad. She opens the Boston Symphony Orchestra season in an all-Ravel gala concert, singing Shéhérazade under James Levine. Other orchestral engagements include performances of Berlioz's cantata La Mort de Cléopâtre with the St. Louis Symphony under David Robertson, with the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel, and with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. Ms. Graham also sings the Berlioz song cycle Les nuits d'été, both with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Pierre Boulez, in Chicago and New York's Carnegie Hall, and with the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach. Additionally, Susan Graham participates in performances of Berlioz's sacred drama L'enfance du Christ with Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra under Charles Dutoit. Ms. Graham returns to her home company, the Metropolitan Opera, after an absence of a season, in a new Stephen Wadsworth production of Iphigénie en Tauride mounted especially for her. Also at the Met she returns to one of her great trouser roles: Sesto in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito. A season finale with San Francisco Opera presents her in another of her finest travesty roles, Handel's Ariodante. With a season full of opera and concerts, Ms. Graham sings solo recitals only at London's Wigmore Hall, Madrid's Auditorio Nacional, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and the Châtelet in Paris, all with her frequent collaborator, pianist Malcolm Martineau. Susan Graham sang the title role in Iphigénie en Tauride in Chicago and San Francisco last season, after triumphing in the role in Paris the previous year. Her Salzburg Festival performance was recorded by Orfeo d'or. She also performed the title role in Monteverdi's Incoronazione di Poppea with the Los Angeles Opera, where she later sang in Franz Lehár's Merry Widow. (She also wowed audiences at the Met in 2003 in the Lehár role.) She gave a U.S. recital tour with Malcolm Martineau, and sang orchestral concerts with the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Berlin's Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. She also gave a recital with noted French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Paris Opéra. The previous season Ms. Graham created a leading role in her second Metropolitan Opera world premiere, An American Tragedy by Tobias Picker. Her first was in John Harbison's Great Gatsby. She participated in the season-finale gala for Joseph Volpe, which was telecast nationwide on PBS, and made her career role debut as Monteverdi's Poppea, with Houston Grand Opera. Ms. Graham's most recent solo recording, "Poèmes de l'amour," includes Ravel's Shéhérazade and Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer. She has an extensive discography of solo recitals and complete opera recordings; her disc of Charles Ives songs with Pierre-Laurent Aimard won a Grammy; and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, in which she sings Dido, received a Grammy nomination and France's Maria Callas award. The New York Times review stated: "Ms. Graham ... paints Dido as passionate from the start. 'When I Am Laid in Earth' is as wrenching an account as you'll find on disc." Her complete opera recordings range from Handel's Alcina and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride to Barber's Vanessa and Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking. In Heggie's opera she portrays the real-life Sister Helen Prejean in a role written for her that she created in the work's world premiere at the San Francisco Opera. Ms. Graham's performance as Didon in Les Troyens on a DVD from the Châtelet in Paris conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner was described by Gramophone as "moving and intense ... strongly acted and magnificently sung." Born in New Mexico and raised in Texas, Susan Graham studied at Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School of Music. She won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the Schwabacher Award from San Francisco Opera's Merola Program, as well as a Career Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation. Ms. Graham was Musical America's 2004 Vocalist of the Year, and in 2006 her home town of Midland, Texas, declared September 5th "Susan Graham Day." See past issues of Notes from Susan See past issues of Libby's Travels top of page