LIDIA VINYES-CURTIS

Spanish mezzo-soprano Lidia Vinyes-Curtis has established a distinguished career of unusual breadth, spanning medieval and Baroque music, major operatic and symphonic repertoire, and contemporary works. She has appeared at leading opera houses and concert halls across Europe and Asia and worked with conductors including Jordi Savall, Gustavo Dudamel, Josep Pons, Kazushi Ono, Helmut Rilling and Sigiswald Kuijken.

Winner of the 2013 Bach Week in Stuttgart, Vinyes-Curtis became a member of Helmut Rilling’s Alto Soloists, performing Bach’s Passions, cantatas and Mass in B minor at venues including the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, Hong Kong City Hall, the Stadtkirche in Weimar and Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Sigiswald Kuijken also invited her to perform Bach repertoire on tour, including at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and in Japan. She is one of the principal soloists of Kay Johannsen’s Ensemble BachVokal Stuttgart. She is also a regular collaborator with Jordi Savall, with whom she recorded, among other works, the album Códex las Huelgas, dedicated to medieval repertoire composed by women at the Monastery of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas in Burgos.

Her operatic career has taken her to Teatro Real in Madrid, Opéra de Lyon, Teatro de la Zarzuela and Gran Teatre del Liceu, amongst others. Her operatic repertoire includes Handel’s Rodelinda, Weinberg’s Die Passagierin at Teatro Real, and Philip Glass’ Les Enfants terribles at the Sevilla Opera Festival. She has performed works by José de Nebra and Manuel de Falla in Paco López’s production La edad de plata. In Gran Teatre del Liceu, she has performed in Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, and the title role in Raquel García-Tomàs’s acclaimed new opera ALEXINA B.

With the Spanish National Orchestra, Vinyes-Curtis has performed in Manuel de Falla’s Atlántida under Josep Pons and in Richard Strauss’s Elektra under David Afkham. She has also performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Gustavo Dudamel and Kazushi Ono, and recently premiered José María Sánchez-Verdú’s El Cancionero de Juana la Loca, a work for mezzo-soprano and orchestra centred on Joanna of Castile, with Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE.

Alongside her operatic and orchestral work, Vinyes-Curtis regularly performs in duo with harpist Manuel Vilas, with whom she recorded an album for Naxos devoted to 17th-century Spanish Tonos Humanos. Her discography also includes the role of Pepa in Enrique Granados’s Goyescas, recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Josep Pons for Harmonia Mundi.

Born in Barcelona, Lidia Vinyes-Curtis completed her violin studies at the Barcelona Conservatory, before continuing her studies in Baroque violin at the Toulouse Conservatory. She began her vocal training in Barcelona with Jorge Sirena and subsequently took lessons with Richard Levitt, David Mason and Rosa Domínguez.