Wallis Giunta

Irish-Canadian mezzo, Wallis Giunta, is the 2018 International Opera Awards "Young Singer of the Year", and was named in 2018 both "Young Artist of the Year" by The Arts Desk and "Breakthrough Artist in UK Opera" in the What's On Stage Opera Awards. She has been praised by OPERA NEWS for her “delectably rich, silver-toned mezzo-soprano, with a beautiful sense of line and effortless, rapid runs”, with her performance as Mozart’s Sesto for the Canadian Opera Company celebrated as “a triumph…remarkable in its combination of intelligence and beauty”.

In the 23/24 season, Wallis will debut at Carnegie Hall in her signature role of Anna (Weill/Sieben Todsünden), with the Wiener Symphoniker in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, with Opéra de Lausanne as Dorabella, and at the Maison Symphonique in Montreal as Carmen. She will also star at the Vienna Volksoper as the title role in the Austrian premiere of The Gospel According to the Other Mary (Adams). Wallis joined the Volksoper ensemble in 22/23, and her repertoire there includes Cenerentola, Hänsel, Orlofsky and Cherubino. She also debuted in 2023 at the Komische Oper Berlin in concert with Maestro Brandon Keith Brown, at the Landestheater Linz as Cherubino, at the Staatstheater Darmstadt as the Gymnasiast in Berg's Lulu, and at the Opèra Comique in Paris reprising her role of Dodo in Breaking the Waves (Mazzoli).

Wallis's 21/22 season projects included debuts with Opéra national de Montpellier as Cenerentola, with the Philharmonia Baroque as Tigrane/Radamisto, with the Melk Baroque Festival as Purcell's Dido, with Leeds Lieder in recital and with The Dallas Opera as Rosina/Il Barbiere di Siviglia, along with her return to the BBC Proms Festival for Handel's Solomon at Royal Albert Hall, and in recital with guitarist Sean Shibe.

Wallis is the grateful recipient of the 2016 Bernard Diamant Prize and several major grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2013 Novick Career Advancement Grant, the 2013 Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Career Development Award, and multiple prizes from the George London Foundation. Wallis is a 2013 graduate of both the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program & the Juilliard School’s Artist Diploma in Opera Studies, and a 2011 graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio. She has also studied at The Glenn Gould School, the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute, the Aspen Music Festival & School and the International Meistersinger Akademie in Germany.

January 2024

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Dean Artists represents Wallis in Canada.

...the mezzo-soprano doesn’t simply sing, she truly performs: every textual line is inhabited vocally, gesturally, physically, and the characters to which she gives voice, spirit and presence are immediately, viscerally and compelling ‘real’. Her tone – high, middle, or low – is simply gorgeous, though it was the full, flickering hues of the middle that I found most stunning…
— Claire Seymour, Opera Today