bio
Emerging soprano Greta Baldwin, praised for her beautiful timbre and artistry, has been heard on such stages as The Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Palm Beach Opera, Opera Santa Barbara and the Castleton Festival. This season, Ms. Baldwin makes her debut at Opera Company of Philadelphia as Frasquita in Carmen, after covering the role of Princess Lan in Tan Dun’s Tea: A Mirror of Soul with the company in 2010. Ms. Baldwin will also perform Fauré’s Requiem in a return to the Rockford Symphony, where she sang Orff’s Carmina Burana last year, in which her voice “soared with such natural grace that its scintillating energy drew an audible gasp from concertgoers” (Tim Hughes, Rockford Register Star).
Ms. Baldwin recently earned great acclaim as Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw under Maestro Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival in Virginia, prompting Anne Midgette of The Washington Post wrote that Ms. Baldwin "offered some of the biggest and most climactic sounds of the night." Philip Kennicott proclaimed, "the most gratifying singing came from soprano Greta Baldwin, as Miss Jessel. Baldwin has a large voice... it is a real instrument, professionally and confidently used and in service of a sound dramatic conception of the role." She returned to Castleton to reprise the role the following year.
Ms. Baldwin spent the 2010-2011 season in residence with Palm Beach Opera in Florida as a young artist, performing such roles as Despina in Così fan tutte, Shepherd Boy in Tosca as well as Sandman and Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel, Ginevra in Ariodante, Girl in Trouble in Tahiti and Carolina in the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda, and covered the role of Amor in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Ms. Baldwin has also been featured as a Young Artist with the Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Opera Theater and Opera Santa Barbara. As a Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Singer, she appeared as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Anne Trulove in The Rake's Progress, Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel and Iphigénie in Iphigénie en Tauride in the Apprentice Scenes. Cover roles at Santa Fe included Tigrane in Handel's Radamisto and Princess Lan in Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul in its American premiere. Additional highlights include covering Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito and Mrs. Coyle in Britten's Owen Wingrave at Chicago Opera Theater, as well as performing the role of Margot in The Merry Widow and covering Frasquita in Carmen at Opera Santa Barbara.
An active recitalist, Ms. Baldwin has performed at numerous venues, including the Chicago Cultural Center's historic Preston Bradley Hall. Featured solo concert appearances include Schubert’s Mass in G with the Heritage Chorale in her hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, and Berio's Magnificat for Two Sopranos and Orchestra, and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms with the North Shore Choral Society. Ms. Baldwin is the winner of the Joseph DiVenere and the Anne Ferraro Stone Memorial Awards from from the Bel Canto Competition and the Annemarie Gerts Award from Musicians Club of Women, and has also been honored by the Meistersinger Competition in Graz, Austria, the Society of American Musicians and the McDowell Foundation of Oak Park, Illinois.
In Chicago, Ms. Baldwin performed in the Midwest premiere of John Adams' A Flowering Tree at Chicago Opera Theater, and several roles with Chicago's American Opera Group, including Adele in Die Fledermaus, Musetta in La Bohème, Gilda in Rigoletto and Lucy Brown in Weill's The Threepenny Opera. Of her Adele performance, Catherine Wilkinson writes: "this role requires a crystal-clear voice in the stratosphere, a snappy delivery of one-liners, and a believable heap of melodramatic baggage, all of which Ms. Baldwin delivered with suave naturalness. Her rendition of the famous "Laughing Song"... is rife with sarcasm and rings valiantly throughout the theatre. Ms. Baldwin's Adele not only has the endurance to sing a demanding score with energy and mastery up to the very last high note, but her pacing on stage is exceptional, both elegant and tongue-in-cheek." She made her Chicago Cultural Center debut as the Queen in Monteverdi's chamber opera Il Baldwino delle Ingrate and performed Celia in the U.S. premiere of Cimarosa's L'Infedeltà fedele with Millennium Chamber Players. Internationally, Ms. Baldwin appeared as the title role of Naughty Marietta with the AIMS Festival Orchestra under the baton of Roland Seiffarth in Graz, Austria.
Ms. Baldwin completed a Masters Degree in Vocal Performance at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where her roles included Silberklang in The Impresario, Yum-Yum in The Mikado and the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. Prior to pursuing opera, Ms. Baldwin completed a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, majoring in French and Humanities/Cultural Studies. During her coursework she spent a semester abroad studying at Université Paul Valèry in Montpellier, France.