JenniferFrance

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  • Soprano

About Jennifer

Winner of the 2018 Critics’ Circle Emerging Talent Award, British soprano Jennifer France was described in WhatsOnStage as the "living jewel in opera’s crown."

Recent highlights include Zerbinetta at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, two returns to the Royal Opera House for Iphis Jephtha conducted by Laurence Cummings and Despina Così fan tutte with Alexander Soddy and as Beatrice in the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Il viaggio, Dante at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

24/25 sees Jennifer make her Opéra National de Paris debut singing Beatrice in Dusapin’s Il viaggio, Dante conducted by Kent Nagano. Jennifer will also make a return to the London Philharmonic Orchestra singing Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Edward Gardner, join Jaime Martin and the Orquesta Nacionales de España for the Spanish premiere of Brett Dean’s In spe contra spe, and return to the London Sinfonietta singing James MacMillan’s Love Bade Me Welcome.

A prolific contemporary artist, she has sung Gerald Barry’s The Eternal Recurrence with the Britten Sinfonia, which was recorded for Signum, and in the world premiere of Brett Dean’s In This Brief Moment with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Nick Collon. She made her BBC Proms debut in 2017 and Salzburg Festival debut in 2019 singing Pascal Dusapin’s Medeamaterial with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Last season, she made her debut at the Edinburgh International Festival with Hans Abrahamsen’s Let me tell you conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth and returned to the BBC Proms with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner for Ligeti’s Requiem. Contemporary opera includes the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen for Opera Holland Park, Alice in Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, First Niece Peter Grimes, and Lessons in Love and Violence for The Royal Opera House, La Princesse in Philip Glass’ Orphée for English National Opera, and Ophelia in Brett Dean’s Hamlet for Glyndebourne On Tour.

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Contact

Nicholas Moloney

Nicholas Moloney

Senior Artist Manager
Hannah Bishay

Hannah Bishay

Associate Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Season Highlights

Dec 2024
Kings Place Music Foundation
James Macmillan's Love Bade Me Welcome with the London Sifonietta
Jan 2025 - Jan 2025
Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid
Spanish premiere of Brett Dean's Ins spe contra spem with Jaime Martín and Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España
Mar 2025 - Apr 2025
Opéra National de Paris | Palais Garnier
PASCAL DUSAPIN: Il Viaggio, Dante | Beatrice conducted by Kent Nagano, directed by Claus Guth
Apr 2025
Royal Festival Hall, London
MAHLER Symphony No. 8 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner

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Selected Repertoire

Barry

Alice's Adventures Under Ground (Alice)

Beethoven

Fidelio (Marzelline)

Bellini

La Sonnambula (Amina)   •   I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Giulietta)

Benjamin

Into the Little Hill   •   Lessons in Love and Violence (Witness / Singer / Woman)

Bernstein

Candide (Cunegonde)   •   West Side Story (Maria)

Britten

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Tytania)   •   Peter Grimes (1st Niece)

Dean

Hamlet (Ophelia)

Debussy

Pelléas et Mélisande (Mélisandre)

Delibes

Lakmé (Lakmé)

Donizetti

Lucia di Lammermoor (Lucia)   •   L'elisir d'amore (Adina)

Dove

Flight (The Controller)

Dusapin

Passion (Her)   •   Il Viaggio Dante (Beatrice)   •   Medeamaterial

Glass

Orphée (La Princesse Orphée)

Gounod

Roméo et Juliette (Juliette)

Hammerstein

Carousel (Julie / Carrie)

Handel

Semele (Semele)   •   Jephtha (Iphis)   •   Ariodante (Dalinda)   •   Alcina (Alcina)   •   Agrippina (Poppea)

Heggie

It's A Wonderful Life (Mary Hatch Bailey)

Humperdinck

Hänsel und Gretel (Sandman / Dew Fairy)

Janáček

The Cunning Little Vixen (Sharp Ears the Vixen)

MacRae

Anthropocene (Ice)

Mozart

Così fan tutte (Despina)   •   Le nozze di Figaro (Susanna)   •   Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Blonde / Konstanze)   •   Don Giovanni (Zerlina)   •   Mitridate, re di Ponto (Ismene)   •   Idomeneo (Ilia)   •   La clemenza di Tito (Servilia)   •   Die Zauberflöte (Pamina)

Norman

A Trip to the Moon (Eoa)

Offenbach

Fantasio (Princess Elsbeth)   •   Orphée aux enfers (Eurydice)

Puccini

Gianni Schicchi (Lauretta)

Ravel

L'enfant et les sortilèges (Le feuf / La Princesse / Le Rossignol)

Rossini

Le Comte Ory (Countess Adèle)   •   Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rosina)

Strauss, J.

Die Fledermaus (Adele)

Strauss, R.

Ariadne auf Naxos (Zerbinetta)   •   Arabella (Fiakermilli / Zdenka)

Sullivan

The Mikado (Yum-Yum)   •   The Pirates of Penzance (Mabel)   •   Ruddigore (Rose Maybud)

Tippett

The Midsummer Marriage (Bella)

Verdi

Un ballo in maschera (Oscar)

Weinberg

Die Passagierin (Yvette)

News

Press

  • Così fan tutte (Despina)

    Royal Opera House
    Jun 2024

    • As the two schemers, Gerald Finley and Jennifer France both sang like a dream... France’s crystalline soprano sparkled as Despina

    • Jennifer France’s Despina was full of fun, with great comedic timing and clowning as the disguised doctor and notary, and was highly nimble vocally, with some cracking top notes too.

    • The real subversive centre of the piece is the maid Despina sung by British soprano Jennifer France as a red-headed cocktail-shaking, bar-strutting whirlwind. Despina pushes the two sisters over the cliff edge of fidelity in her aria: “Una donna a quindici anni”—”A fifteen-year-old woman” making the most of her translucent vocal tone and powerful coloratura edge. France has to double up as an ancient doctor and notary utilising her fine comic acting skills.

    • Jennifer France’s Despina is an onstage dynamo, revelling in silly voices for her absurd turns as a doctor and notary.

    • an excellent Despina in the form of soprano Jennifer France, no doubt made for the part, with all the panache expected of Da Ponte’s sassy maid. Here, she mixed cocktails and danced on the counter top of a bar packed with men (instead of the usual chocolate drink she prepares for her mistresses) from where she dispatched a compelling “In uomini, in soldati”, one of several numbers she pulled off with energy and assuredness.

    • Jennifer France also needs little introduction; she is a singer of boundless energy, great stage presence and unerring, innate musicality. ... Her voice is perfect for the Despina, light yet not insubstantial, every word clear, her ‘’In uomini! In soldati’ utter delight, topped only by her ‘Una donna a quindici anni’. And how she loved the voices of the Doctor and Notary. There seems no reason to doubt France’s career will continue its upward trajectory.

  • Jeptha (Iphis)

    Royal Opera House Covent Garden
    Nov 2023

    • There is some very fine singing, not only from Clayton’s magnificent Jephtha… but from Jennifer France, whose soprano sparkles as his unlucky daughter Iphis.

    • Jennifer France was perhaps the pick of them all as Iphis, with sweetness of tone all the way up to the glittering top of her register.

    • Jennifer France made her engaging from her first entry and this Iphis might have been constrained by her parents' religion, but she certainly was not confined and France developed Iphis into a real character, all the while engaging with some superb singing.

    • Jennifer France has a clear and delicate tone and a fine capacity for filigree ornamentation

    • The soprano captured the purity of spirit of Iphis, singing with sincerity and strength when urging her beloved Hamor to prove himself in battle beside Jephtha (‘Take the heart you fondly gave’), and beautiful lightness and clarity in ‘Tune the soft melodious lute’ and ‘Welcome as the cheerful light’, as the newly betrothed young girl prepares to meet and congratulate her victorious father.

    • The one absolute stand-out was the Iphis of Jennifer France, beyond criticism from just about every angle. Her voice goes from strength to strength. Its purity suits Handel perfectly, and yet France can convey such a huge range of emotion. Her ‘The Smiling Dawn’ from the first act was a true highlight of the evening. Handel asks for the voice to be in (agile) unison with the orchestral violins, and France and the Covent Garden strings were in perfect accord.

  • Ligeti's Requiem

    Royal Albert Hall, London
    Aug 2023

    • Jennifer France and Clare Presland were the hieratic soloists, their voices finely blended in the ambivalent closing Lacrimosa, its oscillating vocal lines fading away in irresolution.

    • Soprano Jennifer France and mezzo Clare Presland were strikingly animated in conveying their tormented anguish in the third movement, France in particular reaching out to the audience among the tumult of her dizzying high notes.

    • The two soloists, soprano Jennifer France and mezzo-soprano Clare Presland, conjured the right uncanny purity of sound...

  • Abrahamsen’s Let me tell you

    Usher Hall, Edinburgh International Festival
    Aug 2023

    • Two modern classics (Hans Abrahamsen’s orchestral song cycle Let me tell you, in which Jennifer France beautifully negotiated stratospheric demands as Shakespeare’s Ophelia; and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s blisteringly noisy Three Screaming Popes) were interspersed with two shorter works.

    • "Most moving of all was Let Me Tell You by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, which imagines the rich inner world of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was suffused with melancholy and a tender, solemn gravity unique in contemporary music, to which the singing of Jennifer France gave a piercing, poignant edge.

  • Ariadne auf Naxos (Zerbinetta)

    Garsington Opera
    Jun 2023

    • France, in her second UK Zerbinetta this year, is also excellent, her coloratura wonderfully accurate and gleaming.

    • Here Zerbinetta’s showpiece aria and mock seduction by her fellow artistes (Marcus Farnsworth’s slippery Harlequin among them) becomes a cry for help, an act of self-sabotage. As brilliantly carried off by Jennifer France, the coloratura frenzy turns into manic hysteria.

    • Jennifer France’s quirky Zerbinetta is a fearless tour de force capped with a sparkling ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin!’...

    • France accomplished emotional backflips as vividly as anything physical that her acrobats could have managed, bringing us from laughter to empathy in a heartbeat. The brilliance and clarity of France’s upper register is well charted, but here, she appealed just as much with the warmth and earnestness of her delivery, whatever the register.

  • Jake Heggie's It's A Wonderful Life

    English National Opera
    Nov 2022

    • There’s a star turn too from another soprano, Jennifer France as George’s wife Mary..

    • As his loyal wife, Jennifer France sings with wonderful sweetness, especially up in the ledger lines.

    • There are moments of true ardour, notably Jennifer France singing radiantly as George's wife

    • though making an ideal love-match with his clear-voiced wife Mary (Jennifer France), whose extended aria is one of the best things in the score.

    • Jennifer France’s lusciously lyrical soprano was a perfect fit for Mary’s youthful optimism, and France managed to inject some character into the somewhat insipid role. Mary’s Act 2 duet with Clara, in which they both express their concern for a George who, nine years into his marriage and burdened with responsibilities, cares and worries, seems low and lost, was the highpoint of the performance.

    • British soprano Jennifer France – ENO has always been so strong when it comes to promoting homegrown talent – makes spirited work of his loyal wife, Mary. Heggie’s score is not musically complex – “I always say I write musicals for opera singers”, he said in a recent interview – but beautiful and haunting nonetheless and showcased with confidence in Aletta Collins’s production.

    • They get tremendous support from Jennifer France as the long-suffering Mary Hatch Bailey, whose cookie-cutter American housewife role we can forgive as she transcends its limitations with singing that explores a teenager in love as much as a soulmate spouse.

    • Emotional truthfulness is left to the superb Jennifer France as his great love Mary Hatch, managing to move us at the end of Act One (pictured below with Ballentine) in love music which hasn’t really been earned.

    • English Soprano, Jennifer France played Mary Hatch Bailey, George’s wife. As a small-town American beauty, she was charmingly innocent and her vocals managed to combine an alluring freshness with enough power to comfortably fill the auditorium.

  • Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra

    Royal Festival Hall, London
    Sep 2022

    • It is a rare treat to have two separate song-cycles in the same concert, both from the less familiar category and both performed by the same singer. So all credit to Jennifer France, who bestrode the two halves of this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert with its principal conductor Edward Gardner in charge. France was a bright, fresh-toned soprano, her voice powerful enough to ride the orchestral textures in Danse cosmique, and full of spleen too in the way she spat out “mille neuf cent soixante-quatorze” in the extract from Solzhenitsyn entitled À Slava et Galina, before ending with a deliciously floated “jusqu’au bout”. ... France’s soprano soared effortlessly above the stave. France was particularly impressive not only in negotiating the wide leaps in the tessitura but also in giving full voice to the moments of grief and outpouring of anguish, most notably in “O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul”."

  • Brett Dean In This Brief Moment (World Premiere)

    Sep 2022

    • Brett Dean’s new work is quite a mind-blowing affair: an evolution cantata, viewed from the perspective of this present brief moment in time and spanning 4.5 billion years in 50 minutes. Dean sees it as a love song to planet Earth and the life-force that has conditioned our very existence, but also a lament…Yet it was Darwin’s measured and poetic tone that created the requisite sense of awe, sung by soloists Jennifer France and Patrick Terry with moments of extreme beauty in the intertwining of their soaring lines. These two effectively stole the show, soprano France with her impeccable diction and laser precision…

    • Dean is at his finest when ratcheting up the tension, especially in the earlier reaches of In This Brief Moment. Vivid touches abound: slithering contrabassoon and emphatic choral whispers take us into a murky geological underworld; wordless voices and ominous drum underpin “the Great Dying”. Cutting through an orchestra and two choirs (the CBSO Chorus and Hallé Choir) at full tilt were the glittering soprano Jennifer France and the countertenor Patrick Terry, who let loose in an unexpected cabaret-style section about humanity’s insatiable greed.

  • Pascal Dusapin's Il Viaggio, Dante (Beatrice)

    Aix-en-Provence Festival
    Jul 2022

    • Soprano Jennifer France playing the role produced a confident performance, capturing the changing embodiments of the character, which she supported with an expressive vocal presentation.

  • Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage (Bella)

    London Philharmonic Orchestra
    Sep 2021

    • Jennifer France, stage animal with a lighter-soprano-voice that still cuts a swathe…was the only to one to bring character-led movement to life…

    • Jennifer France and Toby Spence made for an outstanding ‘second’ couple, in reality no more secondary than their Mozartian model…

    • The great performances came from Toby Spence and Jennifer France as Jack and Bella, touching, witty and characterised with wonderful subtlety.

  • Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen

    Opera Holland Park
    Jul 2021

    • Jennifer France is irrepressible as Vixen Sharpears, exuding radiant energy…

    • Jennifer France was an excellent Vixen, fearless in vocal attack (top notes ping) and full of energy

    • Jennifer France as the Vixen captivated from the moment she appeared, embodying a life-force untrammelled by human doubts and regrets and singing gloriously.

    • Jennifer France’s charismatic performance, gloriously sung…

    • Vocally, the performance belonged to France’s Vixen, ever expressive and, in dramatic terms, utterly convincing. France’s voice is miraculously free, eminently capable of taking anything Janáček throws at her in her stride.

    • Jennifer France was a bright-toned, vivacious Vixen…

    • Jennifer France’s Vixen fizzes with life. Voice, bright and sweet, delivery bold and larky, flinging Janáček’s jagged conversational fragments around before swelling briefly into the sensuality of the love-music – or sex-music, let’s be honest – with Julia Sporsén’s Fox, she’s irresistible.

    • Jennifer France is a glorious Vixen, her voice agile and luminous.

  • Homelands

    CD
    Oct 2023

    • France captures the dramatic, even ‘operatic’ quality, of the song, allowing the passionate impulses of the language to swell richly and lyrically, always attentive to the text, then sinking into a softness suffused with sensuous sweetness.

Discography