Young British/New-Zealand mezzo-soprano Joanna Harries is a versatile and dynamic performer of opera, oratorio, song and Lieder, and particularly in demand for her performances of baroque and contemporary music.
In the 2019/20 season she performs the roles of Countess Ceprano/Rigoletto (Opera Holland Park), Innkeeper’s Wife/The Cunning Little Vixen (Longborough Festival Opera), Lucinda/La forza dell’amor paterno (The Barber Opera), Zerlina/Don Giovanni (Merry Opera Company), Drummer/The Emperor of Atlantis in Polly Graham’s production (Loud Crowd & CHROMA), and Prometheus in Tim Benjamin’s new opera The Fire of Olympus. Concert appearances include soloist for Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at Snape Maltings Concert Hall and Duruflé’s Requiem at Temple Church with the Collegium Musicum London.
Graduating in 2018 from the Alexander Gibson Opera Studio at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Joanna is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, one of the six Handel House Talent young artists selected by Laurence Cummings, and an Emerging Artist for the Royal Opera House’s “Opera Dots” programme.
She has previously performed with Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, Grange Park Opera and Opera Holland Park, and as concert soloist at the Bach Festival Świdnica in Poland, with the BBC Philharmonic at Harrogate Royal Hall, and at Lincoln, Chester and Sheffield Cathedrals.
“An outstandingly intense cast (Chiara Vinci, Joanna Harries, Peter Brathwaite)…help to evoke the manic mixture of desperation, determination and fatalistic urgency.”
Richard Morrison – The Times