RebeccaEvans

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  • Soprano

About Rebecca

Rebecca Evans was awarded a CBE in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

This season she returns to the Welsh National Opera to reprise the role of Nerys Price in the much praised Blaze of Glory! - an uplifting tale set in a 1950s Welsh Valleys community.

In the 2024/25 season Rebecca returned to both the Royal Ballet and Opera and the English National Opera as Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro, the opera for which she is most closely associated and in which she has previously sung Barbarina, Susanna and Contessa to great acclaim.

Other recent highlights include the title role in Rodelinda for the English National Opera, Marschallin Der Rosenkavalier for the Welsh National Opera, Alice Ford Falstaff for the Teatro Real in Madrid and Hécube in a European tour of Berlioz’ Les Troyens with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique under Dinis Sousa.

Career highlights have included Contessa Le nozze di Figaro, Despina, Mimì La bohème and Pamina Die Zauberflöte for the Royal Opera; Governess The Turn of the Screw, Romilda Xerxes and Ginevra Ariodante for the English National Opera and Mimì, Contessa, Pamina, Ilia Idomeneo, Liu Turandot, Gretel Hänsel und Gretel and Angelica Orlando for the Welsh National Opera. Her Metropolitan Opera appearances include Susanna Le nozze di Figaro and Zerlina Don Giovanni; at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich she has sung Ginevra, Despina and Ilia and, at the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin, she has sung Despina.

Concert appearances include the Salzburg, Edinburgh, Tanglewood and Ravinia festivals and she is a regular guest at the BBC Proms. A Grammy Award-winning artist, she has recorded prolifically.

Rebecca is a Trustee of the Colwinston Charitable Trust and patron of several charities, among them Shelter Cymru, Ty Hapus and Music in Hospitals Cymru/Wales.

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Contact

Keiron Cooke

Keiron Cooke

Associate Director
Will Pate

Will Pate

Associate Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Follow Rebecca

News

Press

  • Mozart Marriage of Figaro

    English National Opera
    Feb 2025

    • Excellent support comes from Rebecca Evans’s Marcellina and Neal Davies’s Bartolo

    • Rebecca Evans’s unusually emotional Marcellina makes one wish she were allowed her Act IV aria

    • The supporting cast is strong, with stalwarts Neal Davies and Rebecca Evans well matched as Bartolo and Marcellina

    • ..a favourite of mine, one of Wales's greatest exports, Rebecca Evans as a classy Marcellina

      • The Daily Mail
      • 06 February 2025

    • Rebecca Evans's classy Marcellina finds great poignancy in the role of the ageing rival

      • The Times
      • 07 February 2025

    • Rebecca Evans was delightfully entertaining as Marcellina

  • Mozart le Nozze di Figaro

    Royal Opera House
    Sep 2024 - Sep 2024

    • ...the great Welsh soprano Rebecca Evans, who has sung Susanna and the Countess in this opera in the past, was captivating as Marcellina, who drops ambitions to marry Figaro when she realises she is his mother.

    • Evans’s Marcellina hides a touching vulnerability beneath all that brittle bravado

    • Rebecca Evans humanises the often-parodied Marcellina in her warmly maternal, ultimately life-affirming account of the role

    • Rebecca Evans was luxury casting as Marcellina

    • All the comprimario roles were cast from strength, with Rebecca Evans as an hilariously over the top Marcellina

    • Rebecca Evans played up the comic aspects of Marcellina deliciously,

  • Mozart Così fan tutte

    Welsh National Opera
    Feb 2024

    • It’s Rebecca Evans who steals the comedic honours: her Despina is canteen-lady cum cleaner, with her various disguises as the doctor practising mesmerism and the notary for the marriage ceremony suitably outrageous, her stylish tone and clear Italian mining all the mischief implicit in Da Ponte’s words.

    • We can be grateful for some supreme professionalism in Rebecca Evans’s witty take on a Victoria Wood dinner lady as Despina

    • Rebecca Evans was a delightful Despina, revelling in the character’s dubious morality in an outstanding comic performance.

    • The real glue of the plot comes from Rebecca Evans’ Despina, who delivers some top-notch acting, making the most of the sections in which she appears in disguise (her bit as the mesmeric doctor is easily one of the stand-out acting performances of the night).

    • The only real comedic moments are provided by the redoubtable Rebecca Evans as Despina, the dinner lady/school cleaner, who hams up her role superbly.

    • Perhaps the surest performance of the night came from house favourite Rebecca Evans, whose comic business and energetic stage presence as Despina nevertheless allowed her to sing and enunciate beautifully,

  • David Hackbridge Johnson Blaze of Glory

    Welsh National Opera
    Feb 2023

    • ...Rebecca Evans’s irresistible Miss Price. What a coup to pair this national treasure of a soprano, who acts from her wriggling hips to her finger-tips (“Always warm for you, Mr Pugh…”), with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts’s bluff, Ciaran Hinds-ish Dafydd.

    • Mr Pugh (Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts) is in charge of licking the Bethesda Glee (nickname: the Bee Gees) into shape, but his accompanist, Miss Price (Rebecca Evans), is the real driving force...In the stirring final scene, with a rousing WNO Chorus and Community Chorus, Miss Price proves herself to be the fictional female conductor we can all cheer on.

    • Their burgeoning romance is handled sensitively but with humour. Fully inhabiting these lead roles are sterling tenor Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Mr Pugh and top-of-the-range soprano Rebecca Evans as Miss Price.

  • Britten Death in Venice

    Royal Opera House, London
    Nov 2019

    • There were also nice cameos from Dominic Sedgwick as the earnest English Clerk, Colin Judson as the Hotel Porter and Rebecca Evans as the Strawberry Seller.

    • Prominent among the many smaller roles are the decent English Clerk, vividly etched by Dominic Sedgwick, and the Strawberry Seller, suitably luscious-sounding in Rebecca Evans’ interpretation.

    • The cast is first rate, often luxuriously so in the many cameos (Rebecca Evans as the Strawberry Seller!).

    • Dominic Sedgwick, Rebecca Evans and a host of excellent singers impersonating the passing trade of Venice are all exemplary.

    • It seems unfair to highlight individuals when in fact it was the ensemble which was important, but Rebecca Evans' was a poignant Strawberry Seller whilst Dominic Sedgwick was a strong English Clerk.

    • Among the Edwardian parade of hotel guests, gondolieri and other Venetians, Dominic Sedgwick’s English Clerk (who tells Aschenbach the truth about the cholera in the city) stood out, as did Rebecca Evans’s Strawberry Seller and Colin Judson’s Hotel Porter.

  • Verdi Falstaff

    RLPO/Vasily Petrenko
    Nov 2017

    • Evans, soaring gloriously in the first-act ensembles.

    • The other experienced trouper, Terfel's fellow Welsh singer Rebecca Evans produced the ideal expansive phrasing for Alice Ford's mockery of her "shining star" over lecherous Falstaff - and her sense of fun was ideal for the merriest of wives.

  • Handel Rodelinda

    English National Opera
    Oct 2017

    • Rebecca Evans reprised her turn as a voluptuously full-voiced Rodelinda, her sound always seductive and ornamentation finely controlled.

      • Flora Willson, Opera
      • 01 December 2017

    • Handel’s operas depend crucially on the quality of the singing, and here ENO has been canny in selecting a top-notch cast who can enter confidently into the manifold intricacies of the staging while still delivering the vocal goods. In the enormous title role, Rebecca Evans has to jump through innumerable vocal hoops yet is never found wanting; her tone is consistently beautiful and her expression exact

    • Rebecca Evans's impassioned voice of many colours perfectly suits Rodelinda's wide-ranging music. There's a special thrill in hearing her belt out the words 'I loathe you', but she equally convinces, all melting butter, when murmuring 'My darling husband'.

      • Geoff Brown, The Times
      • 31 October 2017

    • Returning as Rodelinda is Rebecca Evans, again asserting her credentials as one of the finest Handelians in the UK.

    • The cast is pretty much faultless, too. Rebecca Evans and Susan Bickley return to the roles of Rodelinda and Eduige in which they shone in 2014.

    • Rebecca Evans reprising the lead remains wonderfully versatile, whether deviant or grief-stricken – and she captures outpourings of love to perfection.

    • The cast are, fortunately, superb, many reprising their roles from the first run. Rebecca Evans captures all of Rodelinda’s dolorous grief and self-examination, untroubled by the heights from which so many of Handel’s phrases start, then fall lamentingly. She imbues her soprano with freshness and warmth to convey the depth of her love for Bertarido, and their Act 2 duet is a musical and emotional peak of the performance.

    • Rebecca Evans as Rodelinda delivers her solos with consummate control...In counter-tenor Tim Mead as Bertarido, and soprano Rebecca Evans as Rodelinda, the central roles are gorgeously taken...Evans delivers her solos with consummate control: the lilting grace of her ‘Ritorna, o caro’ seems to magic up the stunning beauty of the duet which follows her husband’s return.

  • Strauss Der Rosenkavalier

    Welsh National Opera
    Jun 2017

    • …she sculpts the Marschallin’s phrases with a beauty of tone that suggests immaculate husbandry of her vocal resources, and an eloquent delivery and understanding of Hofmannsthal’s wordy text that speaks of a lifetime of singing Strauss. So many of the Marschallin’s phrases make time stand still — the line about her waking up in the night and stopping all the clocks is one of the opera’s most potent, nostalgic images — but none more so here than the notorious Silver Rose phrase at the end of Act I. I’ve rarely heard it more securely, or musically, sung.

    • In her role debut, Rebecca Evans's sensitive interpretation of a woman who is wise and perceptive came over strongly.  She was a graceful and gracious presence...Evans spun long and expressive vocal lines...

      • Rian Evans, Opera
      • 31 August 2017

    • Singing the role of the Marschallin with immaculate poise and beauty, Rebecca Evans presents the introspective Viennese princess with well-defined personality and more asperity than usual.

    • It would be hard to imagine a stronger cast, vocally at least. Rebecca Evans is short of stature for the Marschallin, but she overcomes this with beautiful, elegant Strauss singing worthy of Schwarzkopf or even Lotte Lehmann.

    • With her even, handsome soprano, Rebecca Evans cuts a figure of serene dignity as the Marschallin, able to see all of society’s deep flaws yet treasure life’s momentary beauty. It’s hard to believe that this was Evans’s role debut; she stirred tears and stopped all the clocks. Sophie might see her as a rival for Octavian’s affections, but the Marschallin sees in the lovestruck teenager a chance of redemption.

      • Rebecca Franks, The Times
      • 06 June 2017

    • Rebecca Evans made a promising debut as the Marschallin...she presents a sympathetic personality and sings with grace and feeling, launching the great trio with tone of tear-jerking purity.

    • Above all, it is the singing that made this production compelling: Rebecca Evans, making her debut in the role of the Feldmarschallin, was dignified, clear-voiced and credible as an aristo.

Discography