Meredith Hall

Canadian soprano Meredith Hall delights audiences internationally with her “lustrous sound and fluent legato” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “bravura musical performance matched by a riveting sense of the dramatic” (Boston Globe). Equally at home in opera, oratorio, and concert repertoire, she is especially in demand for Baroque and Classical works.

OPERATIC PERFORMANCES

Ms. Hall's international operatic appearances include the title roles of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (Houston Grand Opera), Handel's Partenope (Göttingen Handel Festival, Germany), Handel's Semele (Handel and Haydn Society, Boston), and Rameau's Zéphyre (Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco).

Other notable international operatic appearances include Eurydice in Gluck's Orfeo (Cleveland Opera), Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (Apollo's Fire, Cleveland), Piramo in Rauzzini's Piramo e Tisbe (Capella Savaria, Hungary), Giunone in Cavalli's Ercole Amante for the Boston Early Music Festival and the Utrecht Festival Oude Muzeik, and Altisidore in Boismortier's Don Quichotte for the Dijon Opera and the Paris Opera Comique.

Ms. Hall's many Toronto appearances with Opera Atelier, especially her Mozart roles – Pamina in The Magic Flute, Susanna in The Marriage Of Figaro, and Zerlina and Elvira in Don Giovanni - have made her an audience favourite at home and on tour in Japan. With the same company she has also performed Maria Magdalena in Handel's La ressurezione, Galatea in his Acis and Galatea and Venus in John Blow's Venus and Adonis.

Toronto audiences have also enjoyed Ms. Hall's performances of leading roles in Rameau's Castor et Pollux, Hippolyte et Aricie and Handel's Orlando for VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert, as well as in The Widow and El Barberillo for Toronto Operetta Theatre.

ORATORIO PERFORMANCES

In Oratorio, Ms. Hall has performed the masterworks of Bach, Handel and Haydn with groups such as The Toronto Symphony, the Handel and Haydn Society, Les Violons du Roi, the Elmer Iseler Singers, The Grand Philharmonic Choir, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, The Victoria Symphony, The Memphis Symphony, The Ottawa Choral Society, The Vancouver Chamber Choir, Orchestra London and the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival. She has sung Mozart's Mass in C Minor with the Toronto Mendelssohn choir, the Göttingen Handel Festival, and the Arcadia Orchestra (Osaka, Japan), Vaughan-Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem for the St. Lawrence Choir, Poulenc's Gloria and Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem for the Kingston Choral Society (England), and Schubert's Mass in G with the Montreal Symphony. She has performed the role of Josabeth in Handel's Athalia for the Göttingen Handel Festival.

ORCHESTRAL AND CHAMBER PERFORMANCES

Ms. Hall's many orchestral and chamber appearances include: Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations, Harry Freedman's Trois Poèmes de Jacques Prévert, and Goglijov's Tenebrae, all with the Talisker Players (Toronto); Aaron Copland's Poems of Emily Dickinson for the Memphis Symphony; Beethoven and Haydn folksong settings for the Shannon International Music Festival; recitals of works by Virgil Thompson, Chausson, Schumann, Schubert, and Ravel for the Arizona Chamber Music Festival; Vivaldi arias with Apollo's Fire (Cleveland); and programs of Handel cantatas and arias for I Musici de Montreal, The Grand Rapids Symphony, the Windsor Symphony, Chorus Niagara, Chatham Baroque (Pittsburgh) and the Händelfestspielorchester of Halle, Germany.

Ms. Hall recently collaborated with the renowned St. Lawrence String Quartet in Resphighi’s Il tramonto, with Clarinetist James Campbell and Pianist James Parker in Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, and Handel’s Neun Deutsche Arien with violinist Mark Fewer, all for the Sweetwater Festival (Owen Sound) .

In recital, Ms. Hall has toured throughout North America and Japan with her husband, guitarist Bernard Farley. With Ensemble La Nef, she has toured Canada in a program of rare Celtic Christmas music drawn from their CD, Oikan Ayns Bethlehem which was chosen as the “most vibrant and emotionally moving disc of the year” by Le Devoir in 2006. Her collaborations with La Nef have produced two more discs of Scottish music, the highly acclaimed "My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose" (2004) and "The Battle of Killikrankie" (2007) as well as a folk masque entitled “The Maid Of Newfoundland”. Drawing from Ms. Hall's large repertoire of Newfoundland folksongs and folklore, it was broadcast nationally on CBC Radio on Canada Day 2013.

From 2012-2017 Ms. Hall toured in the US with Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra in three separate programs: My Island Home: songs and stories of Newfoundland; Sacrum Mysterium: A Celtic Christmas Vespers, and Handel’s Messiah. Sacrum Mysterium will tour Canada and the US again in 2020, returning to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art by popular demand, for a third time.

RECORDINGS

Ms. Hall has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, AVIE, Centaur, Philips, Naxos, Dorian, NPR Records and CBC Records with such groups as Les Musiciens du Louvre, Tafelmusik, Le Concert Spirituel, The Musicians of the Globe, Apollo's Fire, Aradia Baroque Ensemble, and the Toronto Consort. She has worked with such notable conductors as Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Mario Bernardi, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Labadie, Mark Minkowski, Hervé Niquet, Andrew Parrott, and Howard Arman.

January 2024

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