Born in County Durham, Sarah Connolly studied piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow. She was made a DBE in the 2017 Birthday Honours, having previously been made a CBE in the 2010 New Year’s Honours. In 2011 she was honoured by the Incorporated Society of Musicians and presented with the Distinguished Musician Award. She is the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2012 Singer Award.
She has sung at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg and Tanglewood Festivals and the BBC Proms where, in 2009, she was a soloist at the Last Night. Opera engagements have taken her around the world from the Metropolitan Opera to the Royal Opera House, the Paris Opera, La Scala Milan, the Vienna and Munich State Operas and the Bayreuth, Glyndebourne and Aix-en-Provence Festivals.
In the 2022/23 season Dame Sarah returns to the Royal Opera House as Ježibaba in a new production of Rusalka, and to the English National Opera as Brigitta in a new production of Die tote Stadt.
On the concert platform, she will sing The Kingdom with the Hallé Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder, A Child of our Time with the London Philharmonic Orchestra/Edward Gardner and Mahler’s Symphony no. 2 with the LSO/Sir Simon Rattle and with the NDR Elbphiharmonie Orchestra/Alan Gilbert, his Kindertotenlieder with the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya/Ludovic Morlot, Lieder aus Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Mark Wigglesworth, Lieder eines Fahenden Gesellen with the Orquesta Orquesta Sinfónica y Coro Radio Televisión Española/Josep Pons and Das Lied von der Erde with both the Orchestre national do Lille/Alexandre Bloch and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra/Benjamin Zander.
Dame Sarah will also curate a residency with the Royal Northern Sinfonia throughout the 2022/23 season and give recitals at Wigmore Hall, the Internationaal Liedfestival Zeist and the Leeds Lieder, Oxford Lieder and Three Palaces Festivals.
