©Photo: Aaron Skyler

©Photo: Aaron Skyler

©Photo: Claire McAdams

Georgia Jarman ENO Hoffmann Georgia Jarman 6 Credit Chris Christodoulou

©Photo: Chris Christodoulou

©Photo: Aaron Skyler

Georgia Jarman

Soprano

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“She nailed each note with glittering precision and high-flying ease, scattering vocal diamonds … audiences roared their delight.”
(Opera News)

Vocal dexterity aligned with a strong theatrical instinct and excellent musicianship have been key to Georgia Jarman’s numerous successes, in roles spanning lyric and bel canto repertoire alongside a growing reputation in 20^th century works and new commissions.

Of those which hold special significance are the landmark compositions of Sir George Benjamin – Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence – which Jarman has debuted at Venice Biennale Musica (under the composer’s baton), Staatsoper Hamburg, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Opera National de Lyon and at the Beijing Music Festival with Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Lawrence Renes. She recently returned to the role of Isabel (Lessons in Love and Violence) joining again Mahler Chamber Orchestra on a European tour and continuing into the 2023/24 season she joins the Orchestre de Paris under the baton of Benjamin himself, and sings Agnes (Written on Skin) making her debut at Deutsche Oper Berlin under Marc Albrecht.

Her breakthrough performance and debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, came as Roxana in Kasper Holten’s spectacular production of Król Roger – seen in cinemas and subsequently released on DVD – and further debuts include Musetta (La bohème) for Opernhaus Zürich; Helena (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for Opera Philadelphia, Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor) for Opéra National de Bordeaux, Gilda (Rigoletto) for her Santa Fe Festival debut, all four heroines in Richard Jones’ production of The Tales of Hoffmann for English National Opera, Maria Stuarda for Washington Concert Opera and Manon at Malmö Opera.

Exploring neglected bel canto repertoire, she has made numerous critically acclaimed appearance at the former Caramoor Summer Music Festival with Orchestra of St. Luke’s including, most recently, Zenobia in Rossini’s rarely performed Aureliano in Palmira, alongside Norina (Don Pasquale) and Amina (La sonnambula).

Jarman made her sparkling BBC Proms debut in 2019 singing Szymanowski’s Love Songs of Hafiz alongside BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov, and sang her debut performances of Britten’s War Requiem as part of the season opening celebrations to inaugurate the city’s new Grosse Tonhalle under Kent Nagano and with Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. Popular on the US concert stages highlights have included Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder with Oregon Symphony under David Danzmayr, and both Mozart’s Mass in C minor with The Cincinnati Symphony conducted by Louis Langrée, and Requiem with Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra with Robert Spano. This season she makes her debut with Boston Symphony Orchestra with Dima Slobodeniouk as Solveig in Peer Gynt, joins Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and Christopher Warren-Green for Ralph Vaughan William’s A Sea Symphony, and also Naples Philharmonic and Tomáš Netopil for Dvořák’s Te Deum.

Gallery

Szymanowski: Król Roger - Roxana’s aria © Royal Opera House & Opus Arte

Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz © BBC Radio 3

Georgia Jarman - George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence © Opéra National de Lyon, 2019

Mozart Don Giovanni- Non mi dir

“With shining timbre and refined phrasing, Georgia Jarman looked and sounded ravishing in Solveig’s song as well as her dialogue.”

Opera News, April 2024

“Georgia Jarman has a colourful soprano full of warmth and elegance”

Der Opernfreund, January 2024

“Jarman’s interpretation [of Isabel] is especially developed, who with crystalline singing and sibylline disposition, demonstrated interesting talent”

Bachtrack, February 2021

“American soprano Georgia Jarman displayed the same freely soaring lyricism and sumptuous richness [in Szymanowski’s “Love Songs of Hafiz”] that I admired in 2015 when she performed the role of Roxana in the ROH’s “Król Roger”. Her powerful soprano luxuriated in the orchestral luminosity, sinking in, sailing above.”

(Opera Today, September 2019)

“Szymanowski’s Love Songs of Hafiz was full of iridescent beguilement, with Georgia Jarman as the effortlessly soaring soprano…”

(The Guardian, Sept 2019)

“The bel canto specialist Georgia Jarman made a wonderfully gawky but determined Helena, full-throated in her declarations of unrequited love.”

(Opera Magazine, July 2019)

“With her adaptable timbre and a dreamlike height, the soprano Georgia Jarman thrilled in the role of Isabel”

(NDRKultur (NDR.de), April 2019)

“With her light mid-range, she gave much-needed clarity and diction to Martin Crimp’s concise and poetic text, but also displayed stunning power in her higher register.”

(Bachtrack, Nov 2018)

“Georgia Jarman embodied an intense Agnès whose self-esteem grew in the course of the action. Her flawless voice was radiantly beautiful, even when violence broke out.”

(Bachtrack, June 2018)

“though as much as any opera can be, the success hinges on the diva at its center. And the Dallas Opera has one of the best I’ve ever seen. Jarman is a charismatic and lovely actress, and a singer of unusual power and vocal control. She navigates the emotional roller coaster of Violetta — bright and cheery, self-sacrificing, weak yet hopeful — with consummate skill. Each moment she’s onstage, you don’t want to take your eyes off her.”

(Dallas Voice, November 2017)

“Georgia Jarman, who portrays Violetta, has the technique for glistening runs and delicate flickers, and the sensitivity to deploy them most elegantly, but also the power when called for.”

(Dallas News, October 2017)

“As Donna Anna Georgia Jarman is a beautiful blonde with slender beauty, the voice has the quality of baroque as well as bel canto, intelligent and clear.”

(Mainichi, September 2017)

“The singing was outstanding all round. Iestyn Davies as Angel 1/The Boy and Georgia Jarman as Agnès were perfectly matched. An erotic tension simmered between them from their first scene together. Both were able to focus and sustain the long lines Benjamin gives them, winding around each other, using vibrato or its absence to colour each note. Jarman’s coloratura passages were chilling.”

(Opera Magazine, March 2017)

“On the second night, Georgia Jarman, who shares the female lead with Hannigan, sang Agnès. Jarman is equally deft in the dizzying coloratura, her voice a little richer, but her stage style is strikingly reserved, casting the action in a new light.”

(Fiona Maddocks, Observer, January 2017)

“The star turn came from Georgia Jarman, nurtured for years at Caramoor in ever tougher assignments and now a fully qualified, authoritative bel canto leading lady. Her stylish, long-breathed and gracefully decorated Zenobia evoked Lella Cuberli at her zenith; and Jarman, like Cuberli, commands the rhetoric of meaningful declamation. A stellar performance.”

(Opera Magazine, David Shengold, October 2016)

“Similarly exciting was Georgia Jarman, whose glinting soprano and scorn in repulsing Aurelian’s advances made for a sensational Zenobia.”

(Financial Times, July 2016)

“Jarman’s gleaming soprano has the power to ride over the orchestra when required, but she can also sing with great tenderness and her impassioned portrayal of the opera’s tragic heroine is wonderfully expressive throughout.”

(RAudio.net, June 2016)

“Best of all, as Roxana, Georgia Jarman shows how the queen’s Act II vocalise can be one of the most beautiful arias in all opera.”

(BBC Music Magazine, February 2016)

“Georgia Jarman sang Gilda with crysatlline tone and uncommon attention to expressive detail. Her ‘Caro nome’ had an entrancing, lovesick aura.”

(Opera magazine, November 2015)

“As Gilda, the soprano Georgia Jarman had a melting tone that benefited from hints of birdlike fragility.”

(New York Times, August 2015)

“Georgia Jarman sang with crystalline tone, but her capacity for nuanced expression was what truly distinguished her Gilda. “Caro nome” had an entrancing, lovesick aura.”

(Financial Times, August 2015)

“Georgia Jarman’s Gilda matched Kelsey’s stylistic elegance note for note. Her transparent Cara nome had all the acuti in place, sure, but Jarman’s vocal purity and effortless legato, plus her authentic prolonged trill, thrilled. Those ethereal tones in the final scene seemed heaven-sent.”

(Santa Fe Reporter, July 2015)

“Georgia Jarman, as Gilda, managed the trills as well as the pathos of her vocal part; her acting ignored physical age in order to bring out the naiveté of a girl who falls for a scoundrel, unfortunately not an age-defined pitfall at all. Jarman’s soprano had grace, which made her more likeable, less the victim, even as she was being tossed-around, raped and murdered. Even her bloody death aria had a certain sweetness to it.”

(Bachtrack, July 2015)

“Soprano Georgia Jarman proves to be a splendid Gilda, acting the part with forthright simplicity and displaying the vocal heft, timbre and agility needed to meet its demands. One of the evening’s high points was her aria “Caro nome,” which started in loveliness and ended five minutes later in otherworldly beauty — her coloratura encompassing some clearly articulated, sustained trills, to boot… Jarman’s aria “Tutte le feste al tempio” was similarly affecting, and the duet with her father into which it escalates was one of the evening’s most touching highpoints.”

(New Mexican, July 2015)

“As Rigoletto’s daughter, soprano Georgia Jarman gives a carefully sculptured reading of “Caro nome” (dearest name) detailing her newfound love for the treacherous Duke. With a characterization naively innocent, her tones are pure and unfettered.”

(Albuquerque Journal, July 2015)

“The cast that surrounded him was vocally strong, with standout performances from the Gilda of New York soprano Georgia Jarman”

(Opera Warhorses, July 2015)

“Queen Roxana may be easier to cast, even allowing for her spectacular music, but that should not diminish the achievement of Georgia Jarman in her Covent Garden debut, singing with rhapsodic voluptuousness in her second-act song and bringing a bejewelled quality of tone to her coloratura that was close to ideal.”

(John Allison, Opera Magazine, July 2015)

“Georgia Jarman delivered Roxana’s show-stealing coloratura with immaculate style”

(Michael White, New York Times, May 2015)

“Georgia Jarman floated radiant sounds as his wife Roxana”

(Richard Fairman, Financial Times, May 2015)

“The singing — notably by Kwiecien, Jarman, and Pirgu – is superb”

(Michael Church, The Independent, May 2015)

“Georgia Jarman’s glamorous Roxana sang her songs of ecstasy in sensuous melismatic vocalises”

(Hugh Canning, The Times, May 2015)

“As his Queen, American soprano Georgia Jarman’s free, joyful outpourings floated lyrically around the auditorium, like a rapturous reverie. She employed a judicious vibrato and was able to embody both a sensuous and maternal personae, reminiscent of Janačék’s Emilia Marty/Elina Makropoulos.”

(Claire Seymour, Opera Today, May 2015)