Jessica Muirhead, Soprano

British-Canadian soprano Jessica Muirhead completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at McGill University under the tutelage of Mrs. Lucile Villeneuve Evans, and after winning several competitions at both national and international levels, was immediately launched into a solo career on concert and opera stages across Europe and North America.

Career highlights include performing Musetta in La Bohème at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich alongside star singers Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja, Marguerite in Faust and Mimi in La Bohème at the Semperoper Dresden, Alice in Falstaff with Glyndebourne on Tour in England, Vreli in A Village Romeo and Juliet with Wexford Festival Opera, Contessa Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlo in Lisbon, and Contessa Almaviva, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Micaëla in Carmen all at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, her hometown.

On the concert stage, Jessica has appeared with the Hamburger Symphoniker, the Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center, the Bayerischer Rundfunkorchester, the OFUNAM Symphonic Orchestra in Mexico City, the Flanders Symphony and l’Orchestre Chambre de Genève, among others, in repertoire including Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Fauré’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony & Missa Solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder, Britten's War Requiem, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14, to name a few. Along with performing the leading ladies in live recordings of Hans Heiling and Der Freischütz, Jessica is the featured soloist on an album of works by Julian Wachner, with whom she has often performed in New York City.

Since August 2015 Jessica has been engaged as a Soloist at the Aalto-Musiktheater in Germany, where she has revisited many of her favourite roles, including Violetta in La Traviata, and added the titles roles of Arabella, Suor Angelica, Rusalka and Luisa Miller, plus Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Marie in Smetana’s Die Verkaufte Braut, and Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin, among others. During this time she has continued to keep up a busy international schedule, which included her Japanese debut as Agathe in Der Freischütz in summer 2018. In early 2020 she made her Deutsche Oper am Rhein debut as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and was invited back to the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe as Marguerite in Faust.

Last fall marked Jessica’s debut in Israel, with the world premiere of a one woman opera titled Kundry by Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman. Upcoming debuts include Lucrezia Borgia and Amelia in Simone Boccanegra in the 2022/2023 season.