Carolyn Sampson

Carolyn Sampson has enjoyed notable success worldwide in repertoire ranging from the early Baroque to the present day. On the operatic stage she has appeared with English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Scottish Opera, the Paris Opéra, the Opéra de Lille, the Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie and the Opéra national du Rhin.

Carolyn Sampson performs regularly at the BBC Proms and with orchestras including Bach Collegium Japan, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and various orchestras in the USA. She has worked with conductors such as Mark Elder, Riccardo Chailly, Ivor Bolton, Markus Stenz, Philippe Herreweghe, Harry Bicket, Trevor Pinnock, Louis Langrée, Harry Christophers, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and William Christie.

In the 2021/22 season she has performed Dutilleux’s song cycle Correspondances with the BBC Philharmonic, Poulenc’s Gloria with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Frank Martin’s Le Vin herbé with Cappella Amsterdam and Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona. In North America, she has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Handel + Haydn Society, Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the Orchestra of St Luke’s at Carnegie Hall and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra and given recitals with Kristian Bezuidenhout for the Boston Early Music Festival.

She appears regularly at Wigmore Hall where she was a featured artist during the 2014/15 season, as well as giving recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, at the Oxford and Leeds Lieder, Saintes and Aldeburgh Festivals, Carnegie Hall and in San Francisco, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna, Barcelona, Freiburg and throughout Japan. Carolyn Sampson has an extensive discography. Her recording A French Baroque Diva with Ex Cathedra won the recital award at the 2015 Gramophone Awards. Her disc of Bach cantatas for soprano with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra was awarded a Diapason d’Or. She was also nominated artist of the year at the 2017 Gramophone Awards and her recording of Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Exsultate jubilate with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan won the choral award. In October 2021 she released her first solo orchestral CD, of Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne with the Tapiola Sinfonietta under the baton of Pascal Rophé.