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The American soprano, Susanna Phillips (Huntington), was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in Huntsville where she attended Randolph School. She received Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School where she was a student of Cynthia Hoffmann. After completing her master's degree in 2004, she became a member of Santa Fe Opera's Apprentice Program for Singers. In 2005, she won four of the world’s leading vocal competitions: Operalia (both First Place and the Audience Prize), the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the MacAllister Awards, and the George London Foundation Awards Competition. She has also claimed the top honor at the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, and has won first prizes from the American Opera Society Competition and the Musicians Club of Women in Chicago. She has received grants from the Santa Fe Opera and the Sullivan Foundation, and is a graduate of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center. As an alumna of the Juilliard School, she continues to study with Cynthia Hoffmann.
n March 2005, Susanna Phillips joined Lyric Opera Center for American Artists at Lyric Opera of Chicago, now the Ryan Opera Center. During her tenure with the program in Chicago she sang Diana in a new Robert Carsen production of Iphigénie en Tauride opposite Susan Graham, and performed Juliette in Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Rosalind in Die Fledermaus. While at the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s LOCAA program, she participated in Santa Fe Opera's 50th Anniversary Arias Gala Concert on August 12, 2006, and sang the role of Pamina in the final two performances of the 2006 season production of W.A. Mozart's The Magic Flute. Following in the 2007 season she sang the role of Fiordiligi in W.A. Mozart's Così fan tutte.
Susanna Phillips made her Metropolitan Opera debut on March 15, 2008 singing Musetta in La Bohème and has returned to The Met during numerous seasons to sing this role (both in New York and on tour in Japan), as well as Pamina Pamina in Julie Taymor’s production of The Magic Flute (2009, 2010), Donna Anna in W.A. Mozart's Don Giovanni (2012), Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (2013, 2014, in what the New York Times called a "breakthrough night"), Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann (2015), Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus (2014, 2015, 2016), and as a featured artist in the Met’s Summer Recital Series in both Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park.. In 2010 she won the Met's Beverly Sills Award in 2010.
Susanna Phillips continues to establish herself as one of today’s most sought-after singing actors and recitalists. Over the last decade, she has held leading operatic roles at numerous companies (in addition to the Met) such as Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dallas Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Santa Fe Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Minnesota Opera, Opera Birmingham, Fort Worth Opera, Boston Baroque, Ravinia Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Verbier Festival, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona, Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, and Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Japan. She appeared at Carnegie Hall for a special concert performance as Stella in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Renée Fleming - a role she went on to perform, to rave reviews, at Lyric Opera of Chicago and as Ellen Orford in Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. She made her Santa Fe Opera debut as Pamina, and subsequently performed a quartet of other W.A. Mozart roles with the company as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Countess Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Arminda in La Finta Giardiniera, and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. As a member of the Ryan Opera Center, she sang the female leads in Roméo et Juliette and Die Fledermaus. Additional roles include Elmira in Reinhard Keiser’s The Fortunes of King Croesus, and the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor and Agrippina. She has sung Adina in L’elisir d’amore and the female leads in Roméo et Juliette and Die Fledermaus with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Orfeo ed Euridice with Minnesota Opera, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with Boston Lyric Opera and Fort Worth Opera Festival, and Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro with Dallas Opera.
Highly in demand by the world’s most prestigious orchestras, Susanna Phillips has appeared with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Alan Gilbert, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra (Mexico), Philadelphia Orchestra, Oratorio Society of New York, Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Santa Fe Concert Association, New York Pops, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Notable conductors include Alan Gilbert, Marin Alsop, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
A fervent chamber music collaborator, Susanna Phillips enjoys working in collaboration with other artists in recital and chamber music performances. Such performances have included those with Paul Neubauer and Anne-Marie Montgomery, at the Parlance Chamber Music Series with Warren Jones, the 2014 Chicago Collaborative Works Festival, the Emerson String Quartet in Thomasville, Georgia with Warren Jones and colleagues from the Metropolitan Opera, and at Twickenham Fest, a chamber music festival she co-founded in 2010 in her native Huntsville, Alabama. The soprano made her solo recital debut at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall with pianist Myra Huang. She has also teamed with bass-baritone Eric Owens for a recital of all Schubert, which they have taken on tour in Chicago with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at the Gilmore Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.
As resident artist at the 2010 and 2011 Marlboro Music Festivals, Susanna Phillips was part of Marilyn Horne Foundation Gala at Carnegie Hall, made her New York solo recital debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC under the auspices of the Vocal Arts Society. In August 2011, she was featured at the opening night of the Mostly Mozart Festival, which aired live on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS. The same year saw the release of "Paysages", her first solo album on Bridge Records, which was hailed as “sumptuous and elegantly sung” (San Francisco Chronicle). The following year saw her European debut as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona, followed by Countess in a concert version of Le nozze di Figaro with the Verbier Festival..
Recent concert and oratorio engagements include L.v. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, W.A. Mozart’s Coronation M, the Gabriel Fauré and W.A. Mozart Requiems, Carmina Burana, and George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with Skitch Henderson, Rob Fisher, and the New York Pops. Following her Baltimore Symphony Orchestra debut under Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Sun proclaimed: “She’s the real deal.”
The 2013-2014 season marked a return to the Metropolitan Opera for Susanna Phillips’ sixth consecutive season to star in multiple roles including Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, under returning music director James Levine, Rosalinde, in a new staging of Die Fledermaus premiering at the annual New Year’s Eve gala, and in her signature role of Musetta in La Bohème. Orchestral highlights include the role of Ellen Orford in a concert performance of Peter Grimes in celebration of Benjamin Britten's 100th birthday with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem with both the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin. She sang Schubert lieder in recital with bass-baritone Eric Owens at Chicago’s Symphony Center, and joined Paul Neubauer and Anne-Marie McDermott for a chamber tour that culminates at Boston’s Gardner Museum.
2015-2016 season saw Susanna Phillips return to the Metropolitan Opera starring as Rosalinde in the Jeremy Sams production of Die Fledermaus conducted for the first time by music director James Levine, as well as a reprise of her house debut role of Musetta in La Bohème. Additional engagements included a return to the stage of Lyric Opera of Chicago as Juliette in Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet under the baton of Emmanuel Villaume. Additional engagements included Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Michael Tilson Thomas leading the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Filas Requiem with Kent Tritle leading the Oratorio Society of New York, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and David Robertson, L.v. Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with David Robertson leading the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, as well as a recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Brian Zeger.
The 2016-2017 saw Susanna Phillips return to the Metropolitan Opera for a ninth consecutive season starring as Clémence in the Met premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin conducted by Susanna Mälkki, as well as a return of her acclaimed Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème. In March 2017, she made her Zürich Opera debut as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She also appeared as Cleopatra in G.F. Handel’s Giulio Cesare with Boston Baroque and Martin Pearlman. 2016-2017 orchestra engagements included a return to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting a program of American songs, W.A. Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate and his Mass in C Minor with Jane Glover and the Music of the Baroque, B. Britten's War Requiem with Kent Tritle and the Oratorio Society of New York, as well as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice with Robert Spano leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She also performed recitals at the Celebrity Series of Boston, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, and her popular dual recital program with Eric Owens at Carnegie Hall and the Washington Performing Arts.
Susanna Phillips currently resides in New York City with her husband, notable New York lawyer David Huntington, and their children, Scarlett, Charlie, and James. She is expecting her fourth child as of October 2017. She is sister to Macon Phillips. Her parents are Dr. Macon and Barbara Phillips. |
