Kelley O'Connor

Mezzo-Soprano

Possessing a voice of uncommon allure, the Grammy® Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor is one of the most compelling performers of her generation. She is internationally acclaimed equally in the pillars of the classical music canon – from Beethoven and Mahler to Brahms and Ravel – as she is in new works of modern masters, from Adams and Dessner to Lieberson and Talbot.

In the 2023-24 season, Kelley O’Connor performs with the Houston Symphony in John Adams’ El Niño led by David Robertson, and brings Peter Lieberson’s Canciones de Neruda to concerts with the New World Symphony under the baton of Stéphane Denève, with the Omaha Symphony and Music Director Ankush Bahl, and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra led by Johannes Fritzsch. Kelley O’Connor performs as a soloist in Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra with Music Director Michael Stern and in the composer’s Third Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and she joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Fabio Luisi for Schmidt’s seldom-performed Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Additional performances of the season include Mesías with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Mozart’s Réquiem with the Oregon Symphony under the direction of Music Director Michael Danzmayr. A vibrant chamber music schedule this season includes concerts in the Bay Area with New Century Chamber Orchestra and recitals with pianist Myra Huang at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and with pianist Robert Spano at Chamber Music in Napa Valley.

Last season, Kelley O’Connor was the Alto Soloist in performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony with Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony and with Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She joined Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic to open the renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center in a gala performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Other performances of this work brought her together with Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra, Xian Zhang and the San Francisco Symphony, and with José Luis Gomez and the Tuscon Symphony Orchestra. She returned to the Saint Louis Symphony for performances of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Stéphane Denève, appeared with Xian Zhang and the New Jersey Symphony in Mahler’s Third Symphony, and made a debut with the Taiwan Philharmonic in Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette led by Jun Märkl. With Sir Donald Runnicles, Kelley O’Connor gave the world premiere of a new work by the Syrian-American composer, Kareem Roustom, at the Grand Teton Music Festival and she brought life to John Corigliano’s One Sweet Morning with Peter Oundjian and the Colorado Music Festival.

John Adams escribió el papel principal de El Evangelio según la otra María for Kelley O’Connor and she has performed the work, both in concert and in the Peter Sellars fully staged production, under the batons of John Adams, Gustavo Dudamel, Grant Gershon, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Simon Rattle, and David Robertson. She has sung the composer’s El Niño con Vladimir Jurowski y la Orquesta Filarmónica de Londres y sigue siendo el eminente intérprete vivo de la obra de Peter Lieberson Canciones de Neruda, having given this moving set of songs with Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra, with Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Robert Spano and the Minnesota Orchestra, and with David Zinman and the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich among many others.

Buscada por muchos de los compositores más anunciados de la actualidad, Kelley O'Connor ha realizado los estrenos mundiales de las obras de Joby Talbot El rocío de las flores with the Britten Sinfonia and Bryce Dessner’s Voy a Dormir with Robert Spano leading the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, with further performances accompanied by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra led by Jaime Martín.

Kelley O’Connor has received unanimous critical acclaim internationally for her performances as Federico García Lorca in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar. Miss O’Connor created the role for the world premiere at Tanglewood under the baton of Robert Spano, and subsequently joined Miguel Harth-Bedoya for performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in the world-premiere of the revised edition of Ainadamar en la Ópera de Santa Fe en un nuevo montaje de Peter Sellars, que también se presentó en el Lincoln Center y en el Teatro Real.

Concert highlights of recent seasons include Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Lieberson’s Canciones de Neruda with the Concertgebouworkest under the baton of Stéphane Denève, a program of Berio and Crumb with the New York Philharmonic, and Korngold’s Abschiedslieder with Sir Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Past performances also include Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder con Matthias Pintscher y la Orquesta Sinfónica de Indianápolis, Bernstein Festival de la canción for her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut under the baton of the late Bramwell Tovey, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony, Mahler’s Des knaben Wunderhorn with Krzysztof Urbański and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Das Lied von der Erde with the symphonies of St. Louis, Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, and Glasgow among many others. She has given Ravel’s Shéhérazade con Gemma New y la Sinfónica de San Francisco, así como con Esa-Pekka Salonen y la Orquesta Philharmonia, Berio Canciones populares with Daniel Harding and the London Symphony Orchestra, and bowed as Erda in Wagner’s Das Rheingold con la Filarmónica de Nueva York dirigida por Alan Gilbert.

Entre sus éxitos operísticos se encuentra el papel principal de la obra de Britten La violación de Lucrecia presentada por la Boston Lyric Opera en una nueva producción del director de teatro de Broadway Sarna Lapine dirigida por David Angus, Carmen con la Ópera de Los Ángeles dirigida por James Conlon, Donizetti Anna Bolena en la Ópera Lírica de Chicago bajo la dirección de Patrick Summers y Kevin Newbury, Madama Butterfly en una nueva producción de Lillian Groag en la Ópera Lírica de Boston y en la Ópera de Cincinnati bajo la dirección de Ramón Tebar, la obra de Berlioz Béatrice et Bénédict en la Ópera de Boston, Falstaff con la Ópera de Santa Fe, y El sueño de una noche de verano en la Ópera Lírica de Chicago y en la Compañía Canadiense de Ópera.

Para su debut con la Sinfónica de Atlanta en Ainadamar, Kelley O’Connor joined Robert Spano for performances and a Grammy® Award-winning Deutsche Grammophon recording. Her recording catalogue also includes Mahler’s Third Symphony with Jaap van Zweden and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Lieberson’s Canciones de Neruda y la de Michael Kurth Todo dura para siempre con Robert Spano y la Sinfónica de Atlanta, Adams El Evangelio según la otra María con Gustavo Dudamel y la Filarmónica de Los Ángeles, y la Novena Sinfonía de Beethoven con Franz Welser-Möst y la Orquesta de Cleveland.