Pippa studied at Trinity College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She made her professional debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and went on to sing throughout Europe in concert and opera. Roles included Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro.
She has performed with conductors such as Sir Georg Solti, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Roger Norrington, Jirí Belohlávek, David Robertson, Elgar Howarth and Jan Latham Koenig, in festivals such as Edinburgh (Brunnhilde’s Immolation Scene), Aldeburgh, Covent Garden, Maggio Musicale, Florence, Frankfurt and the BBC Proms, and at The Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Theatre de Complicité and Musiktheater Transparant; she has worked with Opera North, Teatro Real, Madrid and Glyndebourne Festival Opera.
Television appearances include Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte directed by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Bach Cantatas for RAI TV, and the world premiere of Torke’s King of Hearts. Recordings include Birtwistle’s Mask of Orpheus with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Davis, and Stravinsky’s Rossignol with Robert Craft and the Philharmonia. Now singing roles such as Federica (Luisa Miller), the Witch (Hansel and Gretel), Florence Pike (Albert Herring), Marcellina (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Dido (Dido and Aeneas), she has sung for Lyric Opera, Dublin, Venetian Opera, the Hallé Orchestra, Kent Opera, Savoy Opera, Opera Holland Park, Verdrenburg, Utrecht, (Tramonto and Sculthorpe with the Brodsky Quartet), the Nationale Theatre, Brno and Fioranko Hall in Krakow, with recitals in Moscow, in London’s King’s Place (with the Tippett Quartet), and the South Bank.
As co-director and performer of ‘Operaplayhouse’, she has performed throughout the UK, the Caribbean and Spain and been the subject of a recent BBC Documentary. She sings regularly for the Kijani Festival in Kenya, and for the past two years has also taken a group of young singers to perform The Magic Flute for a charity to help HIV/Aids children. Of recent performances at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival, SkyArts wrote that ‘... the biggest thing at the Festival was ... the smallest Opera House in the World!’
Last year Pippa made her Paris Opera debut singing Ludmila in a new production of Smetana’s Bartered Bride conducted by Jirí Belohlávek. This season she will be performing Verdi’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, and a ‘Schubertiade’ in Snape Maltings, and she is currently performing at the Bath Literature Festival and the Words on Water Festival in Cumbria for SkyArts.
February 2011