Born in County Durham, the mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly studied piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, of which she is now a Fellow. Among many other roles she has sung Dido (Dido and Aeneas) at Teatro alla Scala, Milan and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden; the Composer (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Clairon (Capriccio) at The Metropolitan Opera, New York; Orfeo (Orfeo ed Euridice) and the title role in The Rape of Lucretia at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich; the title role in Giulio Cesare and Phèdre (Hippolyte et Aricie) at Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde) at The Royal Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden; the title role in Ariodante and Sesto (La clemenza di Tito) at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence; Phèdre at Opéra national de Paris; the title role in Ariodante for De Nationale Opera and Wiener Staatsoper; and Fricka (Das Rheingold and Die Walküre) at The Royal Opera and Bayreuther Festspiele. She has also made frequent appearances at Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, and, particularly, English National Opera. Regularly partnered by Eugene Asti, Julius Drake, Malcolm Martineau, and Joseph Middleton, she has appeared in recital in London, New York, Boston, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Stuttgart; at the BBC Proms, Incontri in Terra di Siena at La Foce, and Schubertiada de Vilabertran; and at the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, and Oxford Lieder festivals. In concert she has performed at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg, and Tanglewood festivals, and she is a frequent guest at the BBC Proms where, in 2009, she was a memorable guest soloist at the Last Night. She appears regularly with many of the world’s great orchestras under conductors such as Ivor Bolton, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Mark Elder, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Vladimir Jurowski, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Riccardo Chailly, and Sir Simon Rattle. Sarah Connolly has recorded prolifically and twice been nominated for a Grammy Award. She was made a DBE in the 2017 Birthday Honours, having been made a CBE in the 2010 New Year Honours, and in 2012 received the Singer Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society.