MELODY WILSON
mezzo soprano
Melody Wilson is steadily gaining recognition as a rising young artist in the US and in Europe. In the 2015-16 season she made two important debuts: in Germany at Theater Bremen (Mrs. Sedley in Peter Grimes and Mercédès in Carmen) and in Hungary at the State Opera Budapest (Maddalena in Rigoletto). In the summer of 2016 she garnered a big success as Mrs. Miller in Douglas Cuomo’s Doubt with Union Avenue Opera St. Louis alongside Christine Brewer. In 2017 she will be seen as Blumenmädchen in Bernhard Lang’s adaption of Wagner’s Parsifal under the baton of Simone Young with the Wiener Festwochen and the Berliner Festspiele.
No stranger to contemporary repertoire, she performed in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles with Opera Delaware (Cherubino), Wexford Opera Festival (Opera Quartet) and Opera Theatre of St. Louis (Opera Quartet). As a Gerdine Young Artist, she returned to Opera Theatre of St. Louis to cover Denyce Graves in the role of Emelda in the world premiere of Terence Blanchard’s opera Champion.
Past engagements include Zweite Dame in Die Zauberflöte, Flora in La Traviata, Kate in The Pirates of Penzance and Strawberry Woman in Porgy and Bess, all with Opera Delaware, Mercédès in Carmen, Frau Reich in Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor and Suzuki (cover) in Madama Butterfly with Opera North as well as Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia, Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro and Larina in Eugene Onegin at the University of Michigan.
Ms. Wilson is also known internationally as a concert soloist and recitalist. She sang in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the Kennett Square Symphony, Haydn’s Theresienmesse in Wexford, Ireland as well as in Vienna (with the Consortium Musicum), and Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été with the Slovak State Philharmonic. She was a featured soloist in Las voces de Montserrat Caballé in Zaragoza, Spain, and in The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington at the Wilmington Jazz Festival. She has presented solo recitals at the U.S. Embassy in Bratislava and the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts in Wisconsin.
In October 2015 she was a soloist in Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli, again with the Consortium Musicum in Vienna, and in 2016 she was invited to perform Schubert’s Mass No. 3 in b-flat major with the orchestra.
Melody Wilson is a five-time recipient of the Jessye Norman Fellowship and a winner of the International Czech and Slovak Competition. In May 2016 she won 1st prize at the Pustina International Vocal Competition in Prague, and she won 2nd places at the Irma M. Cooper International Voice Competition (2014), and the Annapolis Vocal Competition (2012). She also received awards from the Austrian American Society of Delaware, and was one of the winners of the Kennett Symphony Orchestra Voice Young Artist Competition. Ms. Wilson holds undergraduate degrees in Music and Spanish from the University of Delaware and a Master of Music and a specialist degree (Artist Diploma) from the University of Michigan.
