LucyCrowe

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  • Soprano

About Lucy

Widely regarded as one of the most versatile and respected singers of her generation, Lucy Crowe was awarded an OBE in the 2023 King's birthday honours.

Globally renowned as a leading Handelian, she delighted audiences last season singing the role of Rodelinda on tour with The English Concert and Harry Bicket in Asia and the U.S.A., culminating in a stunning performance at Carnegie Hall. She previously sang the role in staged performances in Madrid, Frankfurt and Amsterdam and will revive it at the Garsington Festival in 2025.

In 2024/25 she will also make her role debut as Malinka/Etherea/Kunka in Janáček's The Excursions of Mr Broucek at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin and in concert with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle.

In concert she sings Mozart arias with the San Francisco Symphony and Bernard Labadie, Brahms German Requiem with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, and numerous recitals at Wigmore Hall, as part of her artist focus there this season.

In concert last season she sang with Sir Simon Rattle, Sir András Schiff, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Labadie, Harry Bicket and Maxim Emelyanychev in Munich, Esterhazy, Gdansk, Tampere, Paris, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Seoul and London.

With repertoire ranging from Purcell, Handel and Mozart to Verdi's Gilda and Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, she has sung with opera companies throughout the world. Highlights of the last two seasons include Musetta La bohème at the Royal Opera House, Susanna Le Nozze di Figaro at The Metropolitan Opera and Pamina Die Zauberflöte at the Liceu Barcelona.

Her discography is extensive and in 2021 she received a Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording for Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen (title role) with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, a BBC Music Magazine award nomination for Rodelinda (title role) with The English Concert and Harry Bicket, and released her debut recital recording for Linn Records featuring Berg, Strauss and Schoenberg.

Lucy is based in London

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Contact

Hannah Bishay

Hannah Bishay

Associate Artist Manager
Ivo Ivanov

Ivo Ivanov

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Follow Lucy

Season Highlights

Oct 2024 - Oct 2024
Wigmore Hall
Handel Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (Aci) La Nuova Musica David Bates (conductor)
Nov 2024 - Nov 2024
Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco
Mozart arias San Francisco Symphony Bernard Labadie (conductor)
Mar 2025 - Mar 2025
Herkulessaal, Munich
Brahms German Requiem Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)
May 2025 - May 2025
Barbican, London
Janacek The excursions of Mr Broucek London Symphony Orchestra Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)
Jun 2025 - Jul 2025
Garsington Opera Festival
Handel Rodelinda (title role) The English Concert Peter Whelan (conductor)
Dec 2025 - Dec 2025
Wigmore Hall, London
Works by Charpentier, Kapsberger, Delallane, Hildegrard of Bingen David Bates (conductor) la Nuova Musica

Video

Audio

  • Lucy Crowe performs Handel's 'Sileti Venti'
    Credit: BBC Radio 3 Recorded: 12 February 2025

Photos

Selected Repertoire

Bizet

Carmen (Micaëla)

Blow

Venus and Adonis (Venus)

Britten

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Tytania)

Donizetti

L'elisir d'amore (Adina)

Gluck

Orfeo ed Euridice (Euridice)

Handel

Agrippina (Poppea)   •   Alcina (Alcina, Morgana)   •   Apollo e Dafne (Dafne)   •   Saul (Merab)   •   Xerxes (Romilda)

Janáček

The Cunning Little Vixen (Vixen)

Mozart

Die Zauberflöte (Pamina)   •   Don Giovanni (Donna Elvira)   •   Le nozze di Figaro (Susanna, La Contessa di Almaviva)   •   Mitridate, re di Ponto (Ismene)

Puccini

La Bohème (Musetta)

Purcell

Dido and Aeneas (Belinda)

Verdi

Rigoletto (Gilda)

News

Press

  • BBC Proms | Garsington Opera | A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Royal Albert Hall, London
    Sep 2024

    • Iestyn Davies and Lucy Crowe always hold a stage, and worked the venue for luminous tone-colours

    • His Tytania here was Lucy Crowe, a singer who seems to be at the top of her form, her voice sure yet ethereal, and most of all open-toned with no sense of constriction. Perhaps Crowe’s finest moment was the one where time stops, the act I ‘Come, now a roundel and a fairy song’. Utterly transfixing.

    • He was ably partnered by Lucy Crowe’s bewitching Tytania who used her silvery-voiced instrument to telling effect, caressing Britten’s vocal lines, even in the stratospheric reaches of the part.

  • Garsington Opera | A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Garsington Opera
    Jun 2024 - Jul 2024

    • Both Davies and Crowe are outstanding, and energy levels jumped whenever Crowe steps on stage, every word delivered with authority and exemplary diction.

    • While Crowe’s voice rings out majestically, her deluded love-making with Bottom’s donkey being both comic and piercingly sad; the royal pair’s closing duet is exquisite.

  • Boston: Brahms Requiem | Handel & Haydn Society

    Symphony Hall, Boston
    Apr 2024 - Apr 2024

    • The fourth movement, a well-loved, peaceful pastoral with chorus and orchestra, is followed by a message of healing, “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” which featured the excellent soprano Lucy Crowe spreading a blanket of angelically high soprano calm and solace which soared over the winds. Her tones and affect perfectly suited this. What beauty!

  • Handel Rodelinda Tour

    Carnegie Hall, New York
    Dec 2023

    • She has the depth and power of a Verdi soprano, the ornaments of a Monteverdi specialist, and the stage presence of a Laurence Olivier. She acts every word and every note, often swaying and weaving her whole body or stretching out her arms like an archangel’s wings.

  • Das Paradies und die Peri

    BBC Proms
    Aug 2023

    • Stealing the spangled show, however, was Lucy Crowe’s Peri. Her aerial, agile soprano was somehow both totally assured and deeply vulnerable as the outcast spirit who offers to heaven first a freedom-fighter’s heroism, then a lover’s deathbed sacrifice, before a repentant sinner’s tear finally wins the stamp on her celestial passport. With a spellbinding upper register and winning poise and lustre across her range, she managed to make this creature of Romantic fantasy credible and moving.

    • Lucy Crowe made an immediate impression with the radiance of her singing as the Peri, full of human feeling (despite her semi-supernatural ancestry).

    • Lucy Crowe was a radiant Peri, her light lyric soprano eminently suitable to the ‘innocence’ of the role. She convincingly conveyed both the more folk-like and operatic qualities of the vocal writing and her transformation from despair to triumph and transfiguration at the close – a wonderfully glowing high C – was brilliantly delivered.

    • ...it was Lucy Crowe who stood as the first among equals as she gave a suitably multifaceted performance as the Peri. Combining sensitivity with precision, she shaped her lines to perfection and, in the process, made us feel every step of the Peri’s long and arduous journey towards Paradise.

    • Heading the excellent line-up of soloists... was the soprano Lucy Crowe. Exquisite as the winged heroine, her pure soprano took us heavenwards with dazzling high notes until we arrived at paradise itself.

  • Handel Alexander's Feast

    London Handel Festival, St George's Hannover Square
    Feb 2023

    • Lucy Crowe was simply a class act. With her beautiful soprano being so accomplished, her sound could glisten on the surface even while there was so much else going on within it. The moment at which she described the burning of Persepolis with an unnerving sweetness and serenity marked out the brilliance of her own performance, as well as that of Handel’s writing to set up such paradoxes in the first place.

    • Few sopranos deliver Handel’s texts as poignantly as Lucy Crowe does.

  • Handel Alcina

    Palais Montcalm Quebec
    Feb 2023

    • [...] alors que la stupéfiante Lucy Crowe fut lunaire en Morgana, avec des aigus filés, des attaques improbables, jouant avec sa voix comme une funambule. The stunning Lucy Crowe was stellar as Morgana, with finely woven high notes, amazing articulations, playing with her voice like a tightrope walker.

  • Handel Messiah

    Coventry Cathedral
    Nov 2022

    • Lucy Crowe, replacing the originally-intended soprano Lisette Oropesa, and who opened the second section of the first part, has a beautiful purity of voice (‘And lo, the angel of the Lord’). How her voice soared, too, in ‘Rejoice greatly’; Crowe’s ornamentation, too, was perfectly judged.

    • Lucy Crowe stepped in, [...] and her diamond-glint soprano soon came into focus.

  • Beethoven Missa Solemnis at the Proms

    Royal Albert Hall
    Sep 2022

    • Soprano Lucy Crowe possesses a voice of rare beauty and depth – able to float ravishing pianissimos, yet able to ride the climaxes without ever having to push her voice. She made her mark in the opening Kyrie and went on to sing out thrillingly in the Santus – her ‘Pleni sunt caeli’ launching the fugue confidently and with breathtaking ease.

    • Lucy Crowe sailed effortlessly across the massed musicians. She gleamed in the Christe eleison, in which the soloists’ melismas were expressive and impassioned, and her sustained high notes in the Benedictus were beautifully clean and legato.

    • The wondrous Lucy Crowe always has a special glow in the upper register; in this space, it sounded supernaturally luminous.

    • Above it all the soprano soloist Lucy Crowe soared, vibrant and with impeccable intonation.

  • Mozart Die Zauberflöte

    Gran Teatre del Liceu
    Jun 2022

    • la absoluta triunfadora de la noche fue la Pamina de Lucy Crowe. The absolute triumph of the night was Lucy Crowe's Pamina.

    • es una intérprete de gusto exquisito, capaz de frasear con un sentimiento y una elegancia realmente genuinos, como quedó manifiesto en su hermosa recreación de 'Ach, Ich fühl´s'. She is a performer of exquisite taste, capable of phrasing with truly genuine feeling and elegance, as manifested in her beautiful recreation of 'Ach, Ich fühl´s'.

    • Lucy Crowe es una experta en el papel y nos ofreció una Pamina extraordinaria. Comparada con ocasiones anteriores, sorprende gratamente comprobar cómo ha mejorado en potencia, emisión y firmeza, sin perder elegancia. Pero su interpretación está basada en una profunda teatralidad. Su “Ach, ich fühl's” se edifica desde el suspiro y el lamento y se yergue a través de un fraseo ejemplar. Lucy Crowe is an expert on paper and she offered us an extraordinary Pamina. It is pleasantly surprising to see how her voice has matured to gain power and impact, without losing elegance. But her interpretation is based on a deep theatricality. Her “Ach, ich fühl's” is built from a heartfelt sigh and continues with exemplary phrasing.

  • Handel Serse

    Carnegie Hall
    May 2022

    • Crowe's tonal shine astounds, and she has the pitch control to pull off straight tone effects other singers might leave on the rehearsal room floor. Crowe also showed the emotional sensitivity to shade Romilda's resigned, defiant six-time utterance ("L'amerò") to the predatory Serse six different ways'.

      • David Shengold, Opera News
      • 08 May 2022

    • The show’s star was undoubtedly Crowe, who tuned the color of her soprano to the music at hand. She summoned lovely, pastel tone and lambent high notes for “Nè men con l’ombre” and turned the brief but crucial duet “L’amerete?” into a fully realized scene. Clean attacks, silky legato and enchanting trills are at her disposal. She is a Handel singer to be heard.

    • And while articulation, and ornamental vibrato, were excellent throughout the performance, it was a resonating pleasure to hear voices like that of Crowe expand and sustain Handel’s lines. “Ombra mai fu” is followed by “O voi,” Romilda’s response to hearing Serse, and Crowe’s singing was exquisite. Her shining, pure tone was beautiful in itself, and her dynamics and rising and falling phrasing were tremendously expressive and gorgeous. Likewise, her virtuosic articulation in the fast music was thrilling in this bravura performance.

    • Soprano Lucy Crowe, a great Handel interpreter, took the role of Romilda, Serse’s obsessive love quest. Her performance was exquisite, with clean attack, skilled articulation and beautifully shaped phrasing. The few strident sounds, in her upper register, could be easily attributed to natural impulsiveness. Sung with tremendous intensity, her second act aria, “E' gelosia quella tiranna”, was one of the performance’s highlights.

Discography