|
The English lyric coloratura soprano, Lucy De Butts, obtained a Masters in History at Edinburgh University before embarking on a career in music. Having sung recreationally since the age of 16 alongside violin and piano studies, it was the two fantastic summers spent singing with Helmuth Rilling's Stuttgart Festival Ensemble that inspired her to pursue a singing career. She has since gained Masters Degrees in Classical Singing from Trinity College of Music in London and the Zürich University of the Arts in Switzerland. She has performed in master-classes with Monserrat Caballé, Edda Moser, Gerd Uecker, Heidi Brunner, Susan McCulloch, Marijana Mijanovic, Birgid Steinberger and Rudolf Piernay. She has participated at the Abingdon Summer School for Solo Singers, the British Youth Opera workshops, the Weimar Lyric Opera Studio and the Palazzo Ricci European Academy for Music and the Performing Arts in Montepulciano, Italy. She currently studies with Heidi Brunner.
Lucy De Butts works freelance as a concert, sacred music and opera singer. Stage appearances include Sandrina W.A. Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera (Zurich Festspiele July 2015), Olympia in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Opera Academy Bad Orb August 2015), The Queen of the Night in W.A. Mozart's The Magic Flute (Weimar Lyric Opera Studio 2012), Inez Michele Carafa in I Due Figaro (Zürich Free Opera Company 2014), Monica in Menotti's The Medium (Berlin International Opera 2010), and Belinda in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas & Cupid in John Blow's Venus and Adonis (Hampstead Garden Opera Company, London, 2009).
Lucy De Butts sings extensively as an oratorio soloist. Highlights of the current season include L.v. Beethoven's Choral Fantasy with the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra, W.A. Mozart's Requiem with the Bristol Ensemble, George Frideric Handel's Dixit Dominus with the Ensemble Orlando Fribourg and W.A. Mozart's Mass in C Minor with the Bristol Ensemble.
Lucy De Butts's interest in modern and contemporary music led her to join the New London Chamber Choir, with whom she performed as a soloist in Jonathan Harvey’s Passion and Resurrection in the Casa de Musica in Porto, Portugal in 2009. She recently performed in the Swiss premiere of Lucia Ronchetti’s Hamlet’s Mill, a dramaturgy for soprano, bass, viola and cello written in 2007.
Alongside her solo career, Lucy De Butts performs with many notable ensembles across Europe: in Germany with the RIAS-Kammerchor, NDR-Chor and Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart (Directors: Helmuth Rilling & Hans-Christoph Rademann); in Switzerland with the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, Basler Madrigalisten, Chor der J.S. Bach-Stiftung St. Gallen (Director: Rudolf Lutz), Ensemble Corund, Orlando Ensemble Fribourg (Director: Laurent Gendre)) and Zürich Opera House extra chorus; in the Netherlands with Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Director: Jos van Veldhoven); and in England with the English Voices, Blossom Street Singers, Professional Singers Scheme of the Philharmonia Chorus and English National Opera extra chorus. She sang for three years in the opera chorus of Konzert Theater Bern, where she also performed as a soloist in Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle, Offenbach's Orfeo in the Underworld and a Russian Liederabend.
2016 marks Lucy De Butts's first solo performance with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich (L.v. Beethoven's Choral Fantasy), as well as her first appearance on stage in Zürich Opernhaus, where she sings in the small chamber chorus in Purcell's King Arthur. |
