Michèle Crider

Michèle Crider is one of today’s preeminent dramatic sopranos of her generation. Her remarkably wide repertoire includes the roles of Leonora both in Il trovatore and La forza del destino, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, Elvira in Ernani, Aida, Luisa Miller, Odabella in Attila, Giselda in I Lombardi, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Norma, Margherita/Elena in Mefistofele, Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana and others. In April 2008 she will add to this gallery the title role of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda.

Since 1991 Michèle Crider has appeared regularly in the world’s great opera houses, including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, the State Opera houses in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Arena di Verona, Rome, and opera houses in Zurich, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid. Ever since her American debut in a new production of Aida at the San Diego Opera in 1996, Ms. Crider has covered a busy international schedule of engagements, being a regular guest at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (Aida, Amelia, Leonora in Il trovatore). Michèle Crider is also a highly successful concert artist. She has appeared at the Salzburg Festival, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, at Orange, Ravenna and Edinburgh, at the Royal Albert Hall and Barbican Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, at Savonlinna, and she has been working with some of today’s greatest conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, James Levine, Nello Santi, Christoph von Dohnányi, Semyon Bychkov, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Chailly and Colin Davis.

In 2006 she sang at Hamburg (Santuzza), the Berlin State Opera (Cio-Cio-San), the Deutsche Oper in Berlin (Aida, Amelia), at Tel Aviv (Amelia), the Vienna State Opera (Cio-Cio San), in the 2006/07 season at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Tosca), the Vienna State Opera (Tosca), the Metropolitan Opera, the Hamburg State Opera (Amelia and Odabella in Attila), and the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv (Leonora in Il trovatore). During the 2007/08 season she will perform Tosca several times at the Vienna State Opera, Amelia at the Metropolitan Opera (Dec 12, 2007 – Jan 5, 2008), and she will debut as Gioconda (at the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv).

Ms. Crider studied voice at the University of Iowa, and continued her studies at the studio of the Zurich Opera House. She has recorded Amelia in Un ballo in maschera for Teldec under Carlo Rizzi, Elena and Margherita in Mefistofele under the baton of Riccardo Muti for BMG Classics, Verdi’s Requiem under Richard Hickox for Chandos Records, and the role of Gerhilde in Die Walküre on Decca under Christoph von Dohnányi.