Hailed as both “an artist to treasure” (New York Times) and “America’s favorite mezzo” (Gramophone), Susan Graham rose to the highest echelon of international performers within just a few years of her professional debut, mastering an astonishing range of repertoire and genres along the way. Her operatic roles span four centuries, from Monteverdi’s Poppea to Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Deadman Walking, which was written especially for her. A familiar face at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, she also maintains a strong international presence. Graham’s earliest operatic successes were in such trouser roles as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Her technical expertise soon brought mastery of more virtuosic parts, including many title characters in Händel operas, and she went on to triumph as Octavian in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and the Composer in his Ariadne auf Naxos. She sang the leading ladies in the Metropolitan Opera’s world premieres of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby and Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy and made her musical theater debut in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. In concert, she makes regular appearances with the world’s foremost orchestras, often in French repertoire, while her distinguished discography comprises a wealth of opera, orchestral, and solo recordings. Among her numerous honors are a GRAMMY Award, an Opera News Award, and Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year. As one of the foremost exponents of French vocal music, she has also been recognized with the French government’s “Chevalier de la Légiond’Honneur.”
