Winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World, British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray has become known for her magnetic stage presence and gleaming, expressive tone.
“Katie Bray’s Rosina, who sets off sparks at the top and bottom of her voice and plays the role as a deliciously skittish “live wire”, a classic screen goddess” Richard Fairman, Financial Times
In the opera house her roles have included Hansel Hansel and Gretel, Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Varvara Katya Kabanova, Nancy Albert Herring, Zerlina Don Giovanni, Juno Semele, Zenobia Radamisto, Minerva Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Zaida Il turco in Italia, Isolier Le Comte Ory and Vivaldi’s Griselda (title role) for companies including English National Opera, Irish National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, Garsington Opera, Grange Park Opera and Opera Holland Park. Her interest in the music of Weill and cabaret has led to staged productions of this music, including Effigies of Wickedness, based on songs banned by the Nazis, at the Gate Theatre Notting Hill. Her debut Weill album will be recorded with Chandos Records in early 2025.
On the concert platform she has appeared with orchestras including London Philharmonic Orchestra, Halle, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Aalborg Symphony, Britten Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Orchestre de Chambre de Paris in repertoire ranging from Messiah and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to Verdi Requiem, Elijah and The Dream of Gerontius, as well as mixed programmes of classical and baroque arias. She recently gave the premiere of Spell Book by Freya Waley-Cohen with the Manchester Collective.
Noted for her interpretations of baroque repertoire she has received regular invitations from early music groups including Academy of Ancient Music, Irish Baroque Orchestra, The English Concert, Barokksolistene, Monteverdi Choir, Wroclaw Baroque, La Nuova Musica and Spira Mirabilis with conductors including Harry Bicket, Laurence Cummings, Bjarte Eike, Peter Whelan and John Eliot Gardiner.
A keen recitalist she has performed Schumann and Schubert with Sholto Kynoch for Oxford International Song Festival, Britten, Berlioz and Barber with Michael Pandya at Glenarm Festival, music by Pauline Viadot in Dorset, Kurt Weill in Deal and a semi-staged Italienisches Liederbuch by Hugo Wolf with Christopher Glynn and Roderick Williams at Milton Court Concert Hall and Ryedale Festival.
Upcoming highlights include concerts with Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, Ulster Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Haydn’s Seven Last Words with RIAS Kammerchor at Konzerhaus Berlin, as well as productions with English National Opera and Grange Park Opera.
Katie Bray graduated as a Karaviotis Scholar from the opera course at the Royal Academy of Music, was awarded the Principal’s Prize and won First Prize in the Richard Lewis Singing Competition.
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Kátya Kabanová (Varvara)
Grange Park Opera (June 2024)
But it’s Katie Bray’s thoroughly modern Varvara who really shines among the supporting cast, singing radiantly and showing us poignantly the kind of woman Katya could have been.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian
the playful interplay between Katie Bray’s Varvara and Benjamin Hulett’s Vanya is delightful, and Bray’s scream of pure adolescent frustration when observing Kabanicha’s hounding of Katya is a brilliant invention.
Richard Morrison, The Times
the young Varvara (a natural, pert Katie Bray)
Nicholas Kenyon, The Telegraph
and Katie Bray, as Kátya’s adopted sister Varvara, gave us lashings of smooth, lyrical beauty, not least in their gentle interlude by the side of the Volga.
David Karlin, Bachtrack
Katie Bray sparkles as the carefree and impulsive Varvara. She makes a delightful foil to the other women and brings a much welcome playfulness to her exchanges with Ben Hulett’s blithe Kudrjas.
David Truslove, Opera Today
Albert Herring (Nancy)
Opera North (January 2024)
The voice that really stops you in your tracks is that of Katie Bray as Nancy - a mellow, glowing mezzo whose distinctive vocal colouring put me in mind of a favourite singer, Christine Schäfer
Andrew Mellor, Gramophone Magazine
while Katie Bray is outstanding as spirited, self-willed Nancy
Sarah Noble, The Guardian
Semele (Juno)
Blackheath Halls Opera, (September 2023)
Pride of place went to Katie Bray as jealous Juno. Handel’s portrait of the goddess is one of his most vivid in an English work, a gift to an actress of Bray’s imagination. She presented the character as a power-dressing whirlwind, darting around the stage plotting Semele’s downfall with vindictive determination, though leaving time to grab a quick burger with her brightly efficient PA, Iris (Molly Joynson). Bray’s vim and venom compensated for any lack of fruity tone in her arias. If her colleagues weren’t quite on this histrionic level, that’s partly the fault of Handel and his librettists, who expected their audience merely to imagine the action.
Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine
But the most complete vocal performance comes from Katie Bray as a justifiably vicious Juno in gold heels and gleaming voice, singing with thrilling control right through from the bright top down to a deliciously malevolent lower register.
David Benedict, The Stage
Katie Bray discovers a whole new acid as Juno, singing with goddess-like perfection, seemingly limitless in her range and colour.
Claudia Pritchard, Culture Whisper
And yes, a lot of this was due to a top cast... the brilliant Katie Bray as glacial Juno...
Robert Thicknesse, Opera News
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Garsington Opera Summer 2023
“Katie Bray’s Rosina, who sets off sparks at the top and bottom of her voice and plays the role as a deliciously skittish “live wire”, a classic screen goddess”
Richard Fairman, Financial Times
“Bray’s smoky mezzo wraps itself happily around Rosina’s indignation”
Neil Fischer, The Times
“Katie Bray brings a bright and burnished mezzo-soprano to Rosina, with good coloratura in Una voce poco fa”
John Allison, Daily Telegraph
Le Comte Ory (Isolier)
Garsington Opera, July 2021
Andrea Carroll is most persuasive as the Countess, and Katie Bray perhaps even more so in the trouser role of the page Isolier.
David Mellor, Daily Mail
Bray makes a fine Isolier, knowing and spirited
Tim Ashley, The Guardian
The cast goes for it in a big way, and everyone is so comprehensively on top of their game, vocally, that the technical achievement barely registers...The whole company is equally agile, whether it’s tenor Jack Swanson as Ory or Katie Bray as the amorous pageboy Isolier
Richard Bratby, The Spectator
Katie Bray brought her usual energy to the trouser role of Isolier, showing a graceful line and delicate articulation.
Dominic Lowe, Bachtrack
Boulogne, Handel & Mozart (streamed concert)
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, January 2021
Bray is a superb singing-actress, catching the controlled desperation of the aria, urged on by Maximiliano Martin’s obbligato clarinet, before releasing into the unbounded exhilaration of the Laudamus – an injection of purest musical joy.
Alexandra Coghlan, iNews
Bray made a lovely Sesto, stylish and vibrant, singing with a great sense of line yet intensity too and I am now keen to hear her in the full opera! She followed this with the 'Laudamus Te' from Mozart's Mass in C minor, coping with the music's virtuoso challenges with admirable freedom and elan
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Hers is a voice that combines the heightened thrills of the soprano with the soulful pungency of the lower tessitura. And where this impassioned aria – Sesto’s blind, reckless love overruling common sense – displays Bray’s range of emotional heat, what follows, the Laudamus Te from Mozart’s Mass in C minor, is a brilliant showpiece for an exceptional singer.
Ken Walton, VoxCarnyx
At Lunch Two with Freya Waley Cohen
Britten Sinfonia, Wigmore Hall (January 2020)
it inspired Waley-Cohen to write music as wild, energised and volatile as her subject matter. There was a folk-dance feel at times, but also a manic freneticism, particularly in the (I think) sardonic final song, Spell for Logic, which recalled Shostakovich at his most unhinged. Not comfortable listening, but striking and superbly put over by the mezzo-soprano Katie Bray and the virtuoso principals of the Britten Sinfonia.
Richard Morrison, The Times
Griselda
Irish National Opera (October 2019)
Accordingly, one of this production’s three main triumphs is that all six singers – led by the mezzo Katie Bray as Griselda – are virtuosos. Each calmly navigates Vivaldi’s mercilessly instrumental-style high-speed leaps and running figures with jaw-dropping flair and security, simultaneously communicating anger, heartbreak and inner conflict, among other emotions, with great credibility.
Michael Dungan, The Irish Times
Bray’s steely portrayal of the queen is one of the most intriguing aspects of the production. Tough and scrappy, in the pugilistic sense, the audience award winner at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition slices through the Vivaldian vocal runs, such as in ‘Ho il cor gia lacero’, a true expression of the lead character’s rage and frustration.
Toner Quinn, The Journal of Music
Katya Kabanova
Opera North (February 2019)
Katie Bray's engaging Varvara frolicked prettily in love but found sympathy and more serious tone when with Katya
Martin Dreyer, Opera Magazine
At the end of Act 2, Varvara and her lover, the teacher Kudryash, get the one simple strophic melody of the opera: Bray and Alexander Sprague sang it beautifully, more credible young lovers than I’ve seen in many a year on an opera stage
David Karlin - bachtrack
Hugo Wolf: Italian Songbook (with Roderick Williams)
Milton Court Concert Hall (February 2019)
Bray and Pierce's contrasting voices - the mezzo grave and resonant...enhanced the dramatic textures.
Neil Fisher, The Times
Bray herself has a powerful instrument with a lot of character to it, intensely dramatic but also very sensual, and she brought astonishing emotional depth and directness to her numbers. She was hilarious delivering Sams's texts for XII, "My lover is so small", with all its references to insects, bugs and other pests.
Alexander Campbell, Classical Source
Katie Bray Opera Repertoire
| BERLIOZ | Béatrice et Bénédict (Béatrice) |
|---|---|
| BIZET | Carmen (Carmen) |
| BRITTEN | Albert Herring (Nancy) |
| CAVALLI | La Calisto (Satirino) |
| CHABRIER | L'Etoile (Lazuli) |
| CONTI | L'Issipile (Eurinome) |
| DELIBES | Lakmé (Mallika) |
| GOUNOD | Faust (Siebel) |
| HANDEL | Radamisto (Zenobia) |
| HUMPERDINCK | Hansel and Gretel (Hansel) |
| JANACEK | Katya Kabanova (Varvara) |
| MASCAGNI | Cavalleria Rusticana (Lola) |
| MASSENET | Werther (Charlotte) |
| MAXWELL-DAVIES | Kommilitonen! (Wu) |
| MONTEVERDI | Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Minerva) |
| MOZART | Cosi fan tutte (Dorabella) |
| PURCELL | Dido and Aeneas (Dido) |
| RAVEL | L'enfant et les sortilèges (L’enfant; La bergère Louis XV; La chatte; La |
| ROSSINI | Barber of Seville (Rosina) |
| ULLMANN | Der Kaiser von Atlantis (Drummer Girl) |
| VIVALDI | Griselda (title role) |
| WEILL | Die Dreigroschenoper (Polly Peachum) |
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