Katharine Tier
Katharine Tier has established herself as a prodigiously gifted and versatile singer with important experiences on the world operatic, concert and recital stages. Katharine won the Australian Singing Competition at just 20 years of age. At 22 she won the National Opera foundation’s Italian Opera award and spent 4 months as a young artist with Rome Opera where she covered the title role in Rossini’s Tancredi. At 24 years of age, Katharine won a highly coveted place in San Francisco Opera’s Merola program. Katharine went on to become the first Australian female singer to be accepted into San Francisco Opera’s young artist program; the prestigious Adler Fellowship.
As a 2007 and 2008 member of the distinguished Adler Fellowship program Katharine made her mainstage opera debut with the company as the Third Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She performed Suzy in La Rondine and Kate Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly for the company, and she was seen as Brigitta in Die Tote Stadt in performances met with great acclaim. Other significant additions to her repertoire in her tenure with the Alder Fellowship comprised Polinesso (Ariodante), Dalila (Samson et Dalila) and Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier).
In 2009 Katharine was chosen to represent her native Australia in the renowned Cardiff Singer of the World competition. 2009 and 2010 saw key role and company debuts for Katharine. Carmen) for Opera North, covered Charlotte (Werther) for Opera Australia, performed Mary (The Flying Dutchman) for State Opera of South Australia, sang Annina, Third Lady and a reprise of Flosshilde for Deutsche Oper Berlin, Herodias’s Page in Salome for the Saito Kinen Festival under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. She returned to the US at the start of the 2010-2011 season where she debuted Dorabella for Virginia Opera to excellent acclaim.
From 2011 to 2018 Katharine was engaged as a principal mezzo with the historied and prestigious Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, where she went on to specialize in dramatic mezzo and complex modern repertoire. Katharine continued to be engaged with the company as a guest after leaving the ensemble. Wagnerian roles with the company included Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, Flosshilde in Das Rheingold, Fricka in Das Rheingold, Fricka in Die Walküre, Waltraute in Die Walküre, Erda in Siegfried, and all four roles of 1st Norn, 2nd Norn, Waltraute and Flosshilde in Götterdämmerung. In the Badisches Staatstheater’s most recent Ring Cycle, Katharine sang a total of seven roles within the one cycle to great critical acclaim.
Other significant roles with the Badisches Staatstheater included Didon (Les Troyens), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), Carmen (Carmen), Kitty Oppenheimer (Dr. Atomic), Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus), Iphigenie (Iphigenie en Tauride), La Grand Vestale (La Vestale), Genevieve (Pelleas et Melisande), and Mrs Sedley (Peter Grimes) to name but a few.
Katharine returned to the US in 2014 where she made her debut with the distinguished Dallas Opera in a reprise of Brigitta (Die Tote Stadt); “Mezzo-soprano Katharine Tier was an equally strong presence on stage as Paul's faithful, pious servant.” (Dallas Observer). In 2014 she was also invited to participate in the internationally acclaimed Queen Sonja International Music Competition in Oslo – one of thirty singers from over 200 applicants world-wide.
In 2017 Katharine hung up her Wagner helmet (temporarily) and delighted in singing the role of Juno in Semele as part of the Badisches Staatstheater’s world-renowned “Händel-Festspiele”, demonstrating her versatility as a dramatic mezzo with an excellent facility for coloratura and a sensibility for early music; “The Australian mezzo has become better known for Wagnerian roles of late, but here took on the Baroque style required with mesmerising stage presence and acting chops.” (Sandra Bowdler, The Opera Critic).
An avid concert performer and recitalist, Katharine has performed Wagner’s Wesendonk Lieder with Melbourne Symphony, and Kindertotenlieder for Lieder Alive!. Other orchestral performances include the Shostakovich song-cycle From Jewish Poetry, Op. 79; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9; the Duruflé Requiem, Op. 9; Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; Händel’s Israel in Egypt; Mozart’s Requiem in D minor; George Crumb’s song-cycle, Night of the Four Moons, written to the text of the pre-eminent Spanish poet and dramatist Frederico Garcia Lorca; James H. Carr’s song-cycle for Mezzosoprano and Clarinet, Four Wilde Aphorisms. Katharine has given recitals for the National Lieder Society and the Joan Sutherland Society, in addition to numerous orchestral concerts and piano recitals during her tenure with the Badisches Staatstheater. Katharine can be heard in a recording of the acclaimed contemporary oratorio, Hallel for Our Times, by American composer Shelley Olson.