Kirsten Chambers
Soprano
Soprano Kirsten Chambers is gaining attention for her exciting voice of remarkable beauty and power. Highly applauded by The Dallas Morning News for her "appealing high notes," her voice "sustains a fullness that blossoms to a consistently brilliant top well-suited to Strauss and Wagner." As an emerging professional, her featured repertoire includes the title roles in Tosca, Turandot, and Ariadne auf Naxos, as well as Chrysothemis in Elektra, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, and Elsa in Lohengrin.
Upcoming engagements include Elsa in Lohengrin and promotional concerts for Savonlinna Opera Festival, as well as a concert with Orchestra Kentucky.
Ms. Chambers began the 2011-12 season with a cover of the title role of Turandot with Arizona Opera, and a concert performance of the title role of Tosca with Opera Saratoga. She made her Lincoln Center debut starring in the soprano monodrama Nora, In the Great Outdoors with American Opera Projects, followed by a staged performance of Tosca with the Martha Cardona Opera and a return as Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana.
The 2009-10 season included multiple appearances with Lake George Opera, including Eleonora in Salieri's Prima la musica, poi le parole and as a featured guest artist in Much Ado about Mozart. Recital presentations were given with her husband, conductor and pianist Keith Chambers, at Northwestern State University, and in Princeton with members of the New Jersey Symphony in Edward T. Cone's Philomela: Three Nightingale Songs. At year's end, Ms. Chambers returned to Toledo Opera to cover Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos and was re-engaged by Opera New Jersey to perform excerpts from Madama Butterfly as Cio-Cio-San.
Prior to 2009, Ms. Chambers was Nedda in I Pagliacci with the Bronx Opera. As a studio artist, she covered Violetta in La Traviata and performed excerpts as the title role of Norma for Opera New Jersey. She covered both Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly and Micaëla in Carmen for Shreveport Opera. For the Moores Opera Center, she performed Giulietta in Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Musetta in La Bohème. Other past engagements include performances with Center City Opera, Opera Illinois, Opera East Texas, Halifax Opera, The Living Opera, among others.
A champion of new music, Ms. Chambers most recently gave a concert reading of The Golden Ticket with American Lyric Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center and then premiered Paul's Case by Gregory Spears with American Opera Projects. As part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, she performed the roles of Ivona in The Hunger Art by Jeff Myers and Liz in The Golden Gate by Conrad Cummings. She created the role of Saralinda in the world premiere of Christopher Theofanidis' Thirteen Clocks, and her performance as Dircea in Casanova's Homecoming was recorded on the Newport Classics Label. Recently, at the invitation of Stephen Schwartz, she previewed scenes from his first opera, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, with the Chelsea Symphony as Mrs. Clayton.
Ms. Chambers completed her musical education by graduating magna cum laude from Illinois Wesleyan University and earning her Masters Degree from the University of Houston. Abroad, she trained in Austria with the American Institute of Musical Studies.