Annie Rosen
This season, mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen debuts as the title role of The Maid of Orleans (Opera Company of Middlebury) and of L’enfant et les sortilèges (Florentine Opera), returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Ankhesenpaaten/Akhnaten and to the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Taller Sister/Proving Up (postponed), and covers Guinevere/Le roi Arthus at Bard Summerscape. Some of her pandemic projects included full-length films of Hansel and Gretel (Opera Ithaca) and the filmed premiere of Taking Up Serpents (Chicago Opera Theater).
An aficionado of new and experimental work, Rosen joined the Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s Explorations series in 2019 to present a fully staged version of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s one-woman song cycle Penelope. Other fringe work has included a collaboration with director Annie Saunders and the International Contemporary Ensemble to help create The Wreck, a site-specific devised opera based on the poetry of Anne Sexton and the compositions of Mariana Sadovska; a fully staged interpretation of Gyorgy Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments for solo voice and solo violin in New York City, and a collaboration with the Hong Kong Ballet in Kurt Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden.
On the concert stage, Rosen’s repertoire spans medieval to contemporary and everything in between. Her recital repertoire, often staged, has included chants of Hildegard von Bingen; Handel solo cantatas; song cycles by Berlioz, Berio, and Shostakovich; and world premieres of Hindi and Farsi songs by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail.
Rosen is also an eager participant in the wide world of video game music. Her voice has appeared on numerous arrangements of game soundtracks across platforms and as a featured soloist on the original games Ambition: A Minuet In Power, 12 Labors, and Plateau Melody. She is a 2022 Grammy nominee for Akhnaten. She was a 2012 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions semifinalist. She holds additional awards from the Gerda Lissner Foundation, the Santa Fe Opera and Central City Opera, and the Connecticut Opera Guild.