Cyndia Sieden
Soprano
“Kudos to soprano Cyndia Sieden for an outstanding performance of a challenging piece. Singing beautifully is one thing...but Sieden went the next step into artistry by imbuing every phrase with significance — not self-consciously, but with genuine urgency.”
— Washington Post
Coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden earns raves for singing that garners such superlatives as “pyrotechnic,” and “dizzying.” Her purity of tone and pitch-perfect musicianship allow her to move with ease from 18th-century composers such as Handel and Mozart, to complex 21st-century works by such masters as Thomas Adès and Esa-Pekka Salonen. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the protagonist in Berg’s Lulu, and returned to sing Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She made her Salzburg Festival debut in Ombra Felice, a fully staged production of Mozart concert arias, and returned to sing Aspasia in Jonathan Miller’s production of Mitridate re di Ponto, released on CD under the Salzburg Festival label. She appeared at New York City Opera in the title role of Handel’s Partenope, and Morton Feldman’s Neither. Read more in biography below.
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Biography
Coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden earns raves for singing that garners such superlatives as “pyrotechnic,” and “dizzying.” Her purity of tone and pitch-perfect musicianship allow her to move with ease from 18th-century composers such as Handel and Mozart, to complex 21st-century works by such masters as Thomas Adès and Esa-Pekka Salonen. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the protagonist in Berg’s Lulu, and returned to sing Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She made her Salzburg Festival debut in Ombra Felice, a fully staged production of Mozart concert arias, and returned to sing Aspasia in Jonathan Miller’s production of Mitridate re di Ponto, released on CD under the Salzburg Festival label. She appeared at New York City Opera in the title role of Handel’s Partenope, and Morton Feldman’s Neither.
Contemporary opera remains a pillar of her activities. Her performances as Ariel in Adès’ The Tempest, which premiered at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with the composer at the podium, astounded critics. London’s Daily Telegraph said, “her ability to keep control over the stratospherically high writing for Ariel [is] astonishing” and the Independent on Sunday “a miraculous combination of elegance, poignancy and chutzpah.” She appeared in subsequent performances in France, Denmark, and Santa Fe, reprising the role most recently for Oper Frankfurt. Other career highlights include the role of the Cat in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland at Geneva Opera, and Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Dionysus at Netherlands Opera.
She has garnered equally enthusiastic acclaim for more traditional roles. Her Archiv recordings of Die Zauberflöte (Queen of the Night) and Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (Blondchen), conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, affirmed her status as a preeminent interpreter of Mozart.
In addition to the Metropolitan Opera, Sieden has performed leading roles at the world’s most important opera houses including Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, Paris’s Opera Bastille and Théâtre du Châtelet, London’s English National Opera, Italy’s Teatro Massimo, as well as in Beijing and Australia. She is also closely associated with the operas of Richard Strauss: Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, and Aminta in Die Schweigsame Frau. She is one of the few contemporary sopranos to have sung the original 1912 version of Ariadne, in which Zerbinetta’s aria sits a whole step higher than in the commonly heard 1916 revision.
Ms. Sieden has sung in concert with the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago, London, and San Francisco Symphonies, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. She is much in demand for the oratorios of Handel, Mozart and Haydn; works of Bach; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8; and Orff’s Carmina Burana. She has also brought opera such as Bernstein’s Candide, and Ariadne auf Naxos to the concert stage. With the Los Angeles Philharmonic, she has sung Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Wing on Wing on a European tour, and introduced Thomas Adès’s Scenes from The Tempest to the orchestral world. Recent and upcoming concert highlights include the premiere of Sunleif Rasmussen’s Symphony No. 2, “The Earth Anew” with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and performances with Seattle, Indianapolis, Dallas, and Monterey Symphonies and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival.
An active recitalist and frequent guest artist with the New York Festival of Song, Miss Sieden gave the New York premiere of John Musto’s song cycle Dove sta amore in her debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. She has appeared in recital at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, in Rotterdam, at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and the Moab Festival, among others, in a wide range of repertoire.
A native of California, Ms. Sieden lives in Washington State.