Lauded by The Guardian for her “dark and focused” voice, “sensational coloratura” and “spectacular singing,” and by The Times for her “fierce, indeed terrifying” portrayals, Beth Taylor is one of today’s most electrifying mezzo-sopranos.
She has established herself as a singer whom the world’s leading orchestras turn to for the great symphonic and oratorio repertoire, above all Mahler. She has sung his Eighth Symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Berlin Philharmonie and the Salzburg Easter Festival, with the Wiener Philharmoniker, and at the Gran Teatre del Liceu; his Second Symphony with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Los Angeles and on tour in Asia, and with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; and Das Lied von der Erde with the Bayerische Staatskapelle at the Munich Opera Festival. She has appeared with all of Munich’s leading orchestras, adding Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with the Munich Philharmonic and Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man with the Munich Radio Orchestra, and has sung Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.
On the opera stage her range runs from Handel and Vivaldi to Rossini, Wagner and beyond. She has sung the title role in La Cenerentola and Bradamante in Alcina at the Opéra de Nancy, returning to Bradamante at Glyndebourne; Erda and Erste Norn in Wagner’s Ring alongside Arsace (Semiramide) and La Cieca (La Gioconda) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; Giuliano Gordio (Eliogabalo) at Zurich Opera; and roles in Bianca e Falliero and Amadigi di Gaula at Oper Frankfurt. Her Cornelia in Giulio Cesare has been heard at Glyndebourne, with The English Concert at Carnegie Hall and the Barbican, and with Il pomo d’oro across Europe. She is also drawn to staged concert works, among them Mendelssohn’s Elias in Lyon and Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Basel.
In concert she has sung Anna in Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the Salzburg Festival, the Berlin Festival, the BBC Proms and the Berlioz Festival, the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas in cities including Madrid, Hamburg and Paris, Argia in La Merope at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and Teseo in Arianna in Creta at the London Handel Festival.
Her distinction as a recitalist has been recognised with invitations from the Edinburgh International Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Wigmore Hall, and she has held an Artist in Residence position with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Her collaborators include Leonardo García Alarcón, William Christie, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Edward Gardner, Andrea Marcon, Ingo Metzmacher, Andris Nelsons, John Nelson, Rafael Payare, Kirill Petrenko, Raphaël Pichon, Sir Simon Rattle and Sir Donald Runnicles.
A grand finalist of the 2023 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, Beth Taylor won the 2022 Elizabeth Connell Award, third prize at the 2019 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition and the 2018 Gianni Bergamo Classical Music Award. She studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and The Open University, and has worked with Jennifer Larmore, Margaret Izatt and Iain Paton.
