Amanda Roocroft
| Amanda Roocroft | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Amanda Jane Roocroft 9 February 1966 Coppull, England |
| Occupation |
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| Years active | 1989 – present |
Amanda Jane Roocroft (born 9 February 1966) is an English operatic soprano, who in the course of a 25-year career has sung leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America.
She is also a voice professor at London's Royal College of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where she herself had trained as a singer. Roocroft was the winner of the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera for her performance in the title role of Jenůfa at the English National Opera.
Roocroft was born in Coppull, a village in Lancashire, and was educated at Southlands High School and Runshaw College. She then attended the Royal Northern College of Music where she studied singing under Barbara Robotham. In 1988 while still a student, she won the Kathleen Ferrier Award. That same year she sang Fiordiligi in the college's production of Così fan tutte and in 1989 the title role in the RNCM production of Handel's Alcina—both to great praise from the British critic Michael Kennedy. He wrote of her performance in Alcina:
This was thrillingly beautiful singing, and she sustained it all evening. One has to write of it in terms of the young Seefried as the Composer and, a closer comparison, the young Baker in Handel. In 40 years of listening to young singers, I have never before heard, at this stage in development, a phenomenon to surpass Miss Roocroft.
Roocroft made her professional recital debut in September 1989 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and her professional operatic debut in 1990 as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier with Welsh National Opera. House debuts followed at London's Royal Opera House (as Pamina) and Glyndebourne Festival Opera (as Fiordiligi) in 1991, and the Bavarian State Opera (as Fiordiligi) and the English National Opera (as Ginevra in Handel's Ariodante) in 1993. In 1994 she was the subject of a Granada Television documentary Amanda Roocroft: Opera's Rising Star. The film, directed by Colin Bell, chronicled the first seven years of her career, beginning with her days as a student and ending with her solo recording debut for EMI Records.
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