Cyndia Sieden
Soprano
“Kudos to soprano Cyndia Sieden for an outstanding performance of a challenging piece. Singing beautifully is one thing...but Sieden went the next step into artistry by imbuing every phrase with significance — not self-consciously, but with genuine urgency.”
— Washington Post
Coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden earns raves for singing that garners such superlatives as “pyrotechnic,” and “dizzying.” Her purity of tone and pitch-perfect musicianship allow her to move with ease from 18th-century composers such as Handel and Mozart, to complex 21st-century works by such masters as Thomas Adès and Esa-Pekka Salonen. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the protagonist in Berg’s Lulu, and returned to sing Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She made her Salzburg Festival debut in Ombra Felice, a fully staged production of Mozart concert arias, and returned to sing Aspasia in Jonathan Miller’s production of Mitridate re di Ponto, released on CD under the Salzburg Festival label. She appeared at New York City Opera in the title role of Handel’s Partenope, and Morton Feldman’s Neither. Read more in biography below.
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Biography
Coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden has made regular appearances at the world’s great opera houses and concert stages, singing roles from 17th and 18th-century works to 20th and 21st-century repertoire. She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Berg’s Lulu and received critical acclaim as Ariel in the world premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Tempest at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and in the North American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera. She created the role of Ratastok in Sunlief Rasmussen’s Second Symphony with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, sang Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Wing on Wing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in LA and on tour in Europe and starred in the North American premiere of Morton Feldman’s monodrama Neither (New York City Opera). She also starred in the premiere production of Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysus (Netherlands Opera/ Holland Festival) and was the Cheshire Cat in the second production of Unsuk Chin’s Alice and Wonderland in Geneva.
She has garnered acclaim as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (both recorded with John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists for Deutsche Grammophon), having sung the Queen of the Night at Munich’s Bayerische Stattsoper, Paris’s Opera Bastille, La Monnaie, the Metropolitan Opera and many other opera houses all over the world. Her decades-long collaboration with the Orchestra of the 18th Century culminated in an acclaimed recording of the seven concert arias Mozart wrote for Aloysia Weber. She has sung at the Salzburg Festival as Aspasia in Mozart’s Mitridate and Amor in Gluck’s Orfeo, as well as in a staged and filmed Mozart concert aria project - Ombra Felice - and in concerts as varied as Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and the epic and rarely performed Prometeo by Luigi Nono.
A Strauss specialist, Ms. Sieden has performed Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (Munich, Japan, Vienna, Bonn, Chautauqua, English National Opera etc), Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (Paris’s Châtelet), Fiakermilli in Arabella (Bayerische Staatsoper and tour of Japan) and Aminta in Die Schweigsame Frau (Palermo, Sicily as well as a studio recording with Kurt Moll and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra).
She has made regular appearances with leading orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Los Angeles, Malaysian and London Philharmonic and the Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, Saito Kinen, Seattle, Fort Worth, Chicago, London and Cleveland Symphonies. Early Music ensembles include Concentus Musicus Wien, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Pacific Musicworks and the Göttingen, Halle, Utrecht and Boston Early Music Festivals.