The mezzo-soprano Ann Taylor was born in Wrexham, North Wales. She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and at the National Opera Studio. Since her début for Opera North she has sung with Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne Touring Opera and abroad for La Monnaie in Brussels, Opera Zuid, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and for the New Zealand Festival. Her many rôles have included the title rôles of Ariodante and Gluck’s Orfeo, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel, Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Varvara in Katya Kabanova, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kristina in The Makropoulos Case, and Kate in Britten’s Owen Wingrave. She has created rôles in three world premières: Sarah in Jonathan Dove’s Tobias and the Angel for Almeida Opera, Judy and Grey Wolf in Michael Berkeley’s Baa Baa Black Sheep for Opera North, and Stewardess in Flight by Jonathan Dove for Glyndebourne. Ann Taylor has an equally successful career as a concert artist and has performed at the BBC Proms, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Cheltenham Festival, at the Barbican and the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. She has appeared with leading British orchestras, and her recordings include Donna Clara in Roberto Gerhard’s The Duenna, and her rôles in Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Discography