Dutch-American soprano Katharine Dain maintains an active and growing performance calendar in Europe and North America. After taking the top prize in the 2017 Clermont-Ferrand International Vocal Competition, Katharine made her role debut as Konstanze in a 2018 production (touring to the opera houses of Clermont-Ferrand, Avignon, Rouen, Massy, and Reims) of Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail to great acclaim: “coloratura of ideal precision and phrasing like a dream, in an unending crescendo of inspiration … her tragic arias were the highlight of the evening” (Opera Online). Previous opera credits include Donna Anna, Fiordiligi, Lucia di Lammermoor, Marschallin, Cavalli’s Calisto and Hypsipile, and numerous roles in the early and modern repertoire. Her debut with Amsterdam’s Dutch National Opera was in Claude Vivier Kopernikus (Coloratura Soprano), a production of its Talent Development Programme; soon thereafter she appeared in Paris (Philharmonie), Brussels (La Monnaie), and the Aldeburgh Festival in ENOA’s widely acclaimed original production Be With Me Now (co-mounted by the Festival Aix-en-Provence, the Dutch National Opera, and six other European presenters), in which her rendition of Anne Trulove’s aria from Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress was praised by Arts Desk as “a better performance than any I’ve heard in the opera house.”
Dutch-American soprano Katharine Dain maintains an active and growing performance calendar in Europe and North America. After taking the top prize in the 2017 Clermont-Ferrand International Vocal Competition, Katharine made her role debut as Konstanze in a 2018 production (touring to the opera houses of Clermont-Ferrand, Avignon, Rouen, Massy, and Reims) of Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail to great acclaim: “coloratura of ideal precision and phrasing like a dream, in an unending crescendo of inspiration … her tragic arias were the highlight of the evening” (Opera Online). Previous opera credits include Donna Anna, Fiordiligi, Lucia di Lammermoor, Marschallin, Cavalli’s Calisto and Hypsipile, and numerous roles in the early and modern repertoire. Her debut with Amsterdam’s Dutch National Opera was in Claude Vivier Kopernikus (Coloratura Soprano), a production of its Talent Development Programme; soon thereafter she appeared in Paris (Philharmonie), Brussels (La Monnaie), and the Aldeburgh Festival in ENOA’s widely acclaimed original production Be With Me Now (co-mounted by the Festival Aix-en-Provence, the Dutch National Opera, and six other European presenters), in which her rendition of Anne Trulove’s aria from Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress was praised by Arts Desk as “a better performance than any I’ve heard in the opera house.”
Mozart has unquestionably found in the beautiful American soprano Katharine Dain an ideal Konstanze. Fluent high range, expressive middle, virtuosity without excess, dramatic intelligence: her “Martern aller Arten” promises us a splendid heroine.
FORUM OPERA
Mozart has unquestionably found in the beautiful American soprano Katharine Dain an ideal Konstanze. Fluent high range, expressive middle, virtuosity without excess, dramatic intelligence: her “Martern aller Arten” promises us a splendid heroine.
FORUM OPERA
Katharine is becoming known for unusual musical imagination, intelligence, and fearlessness, qualities which serve well in chamber music and orchestral settings, experimental multidisciplinary and theatrical projects, and–notably in recent seasons–jump-ins for high-profile performances of obscure repertoire. She stepped out as soprano soloist in Luigi Nono’s oratorio Il Canto Sospeso at the Holland Festival under Ingo Metzmacher, which led to an invitation from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna to perform the same piece under Roberto Abbado. She has also been called in at the last minute for performances at Ireland’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival (“singing as though the music had been written just for her,” said the Irish Times), a solo recital of Strauss, Marx, and Korngold lieder in the Concertgebouw Kleine Zaal (called “a miracle” by Place de l’Opera), Carmina Burana at the Concertgebouw’s Robeco Summer Nights series, and for the world premiere of an oratorio by Dutch composer Jan van de Putte with Asko|Schönberg and Cappella Amsterdam under Reinbert de Leeuw–a performance that was broadcast live on Dutch Radio 4 from the Concertgebouw’s Zaterdagmatinee series and later released commercially on Etcetera Records.
A passionate promoter of chamber music and recital repertoire, she has co-founded several chamber groups including, most recently, Damask Vocal Quartet.
Katharine is becoming known for unusual musical imagination, intelligence, and fearlessness, qualities which serve well in chamber music and orchestral settings, experimental multidisciplinary and theatrical projects, and–notably in recent seasons–jump-ins for high-profile performances of obscure repertoire. She stepped out as soprano soloist in Luigi Nono’s oratorio Il Canto Sospeso at the Holland Festival under Ingo Metzmacher, which led to an invitation from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna to perform the same piece under Roberto Abbado. She has also been called in at the last minute for performances at Ireland’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival (“singing as though the music had been written just for her,” said the Irish Times), a solo recital of Strauss, Marx, and Korngold lieder in the Concertgebouw Kleine Zaal (called “a miracle” by Place de l’Opera), Carmina Burana at the Concertgebouw’s Robeco Summer Nights series, and for the world premiere of an oratorio by Dutch composer Jan van de Putte with Asko|Schönberg and Cappella Amsterdam under Reinbert de Leeuw–a performance that was broadcast live on Dutch Radio 4 from the Concertgebouw’s Zaterdagmatinee series and later released commercially on Etcetera Records.
A passionate promoter of chamber music and recital repertoire, she has co-founded several chamber groups including, most recently, Damask Vocal Quartet.
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June 28, 2018“How much time we wasted, she wrote, believing that things came to us as gifts, through channels of wonder, in the form of signs, in the love of men, in the name of God, rather than seeing them for what they were: strengths that we dragged up from the nothingness of our own depths.” –Nicole Krauss, “Seeing Ershadi” I encountered the above quote in the New Yorker while reading in the middle of the night... -
May 29, 2018Today I want to write about love. It’s 5:30 a.m. in Los Angeles, and I feel overwhelmingly, distractingly full of love. My computer clock says 14:30 Paris time. 36 hours ago I had an emotional final show, then said a lot of hard goodbyes, spent 11 hours on a plane (most of the time spent trying to memorize songs about love), landed last night, slept only a few hours, in my insomnia read the first... -
March 24, 2018"Where’s the push?" asks Victor the choreographer, repeatedly, in our short session on stage in Rouen today to address Konstanze’s physicality in the first aria. We’re trying to refine her vocabulary of movement, which means considering character, motivation, confidence, timing. We look for externalizations of her independence, her exhibitionism, her particular way of getting overwhelmed, her way of trying to pull herself together, her diva mannerisms. She is open and proud, so her chest...
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