Katrina Waters Mezzo Soprano - Long Biography 

 

Mezzo Soprano Katrina Waters has been named one of the 2023 Australian Broadcasting Corporations Top 5 Arts Creative Practice Researchers (ABC Top 5). She is also the 2022 Early Phase Resident at The Street Theatre devising a new theatrical song cycle for female dramatic voice – Songs for Loud Women. 

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Recent Australian engagements reflect the diversity of Katrina’s artistic practice. Katrina is a member of Opera Australia’s Melbourne chorus, the Artistic Director of Eliza’s Traum an ensemble based on the lands of the Boon Wurrung people - Mornington Peninsula - which champions the work of Australian composers, and a regular company member of Julie Edwardson’s opera fusion company Emotionworks Cut Opera. Her performances of The Countess, Dorabella, Donna Anna and Tosca challenge the stereotype of the Viking-helmet clad soprano through Edwardson’s witty juxtaposition of opera classics with popular and contemporary musics:  

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Katrina Waters swans as Rosina, the coach’s rather Brighton-bred wife…the poignancy of Rosina’s lament of love lost and the stirring act of forgiveness she bestows on a repentant husband remain luminous highlights. Paul Selar, Herald Sun, Figaro vs Oz Rock.   

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Performances of Sieglinde in Act I of Wagner’s Die Walküre raised +13K for the Peter Mac charity. Katrina sang Concepción in Ravel’s chamber opera L’Heure Espagnole for Melbourne Lyric Opera and brought her experience to operatic training company XL Arts, performing the title role of Rusalka in Dvorak’s opera and mentoring recently graduated singers. 

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Based in the United Kingdom for 10 years, Katrina is an alumnus of the Royal College of Music (London), Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme and English National Opera’s developing artist programme. Passionate about collaboration, Katrina garnered a reputation in London for creating new roles with living composers and librettists and as an Improviser and Animateur on opera outreach programmes with the English National Opera’s Bayliss Programme, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Royal Opera House. Highlights include working with LiveArtShow (Harry Blake (composer) Martin Constantine (director), Tim Anderson (conductor) to bring the sadistic care home nurse Cherie to life (and death by machete) in Manga Sister;  

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What a joy…a batshit-mental enterprise that throws together a bunch of mad ideas and makes them work impressively well with gleeful conviction.  An eccentric gem. ★★★★TIME OUT CRITIC’S CHOICE

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playing the President of the USA in Manifest Destiny (an opera about a terrorism), singing the premiere of Pisspots and Tosspots in the Onassis Festival at the Ashmoleon in Oxford and introducing inner-city teens to the operatic voice in conjunction with Katie Mitchell’s ENO production Dido and Aeneas. 

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A true Zwischenfach, she developed through a wide range of operatic roles from the lyric mezzos of Mozart and Britten to spinto soprano roles and performed throughout the British Isles and France with leading opera companies, orchestras and in venues including English National Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Cambridge Opera Society, Britten-Pears Festival, Dartington International Festival, Festival Belle-ile en Mer, Bath Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall London and The Ashmoleon Oxford. During this time, Katrina was also a regular guest entertainer on the high seas with P&O cruises singing opera, operetta and musical theatre in India, Egypt, China and Antarctica. 

 

Katrina’s opera outreach work in the UK has informed her abilities as a facilitator and conductor. Currently Katrina is Co-Music Director of The Mornington Peninsula Chorale and President of the Peninsula Chamber Musicians facilitating large scale choral engagement for the Mornington Peninsula Shire.  She prepared MPC to sing The Messiah with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Benjamin Northey in 2022. In 2019 she was engaged by Kingston City Council to vocally direct and prepare a chorus of 100 singers for performances of Kingston Sea Shanties with folk artist Fred Smith and by the Bayside Council in 2018 and 2019 to prepare and conduct the choir for an audience of 30K at Brighton’s Carols in Dendy Park.  

 

While in “Lockdown” Katrina and pianist Katriona Newman formed the Winsome Duo, named after Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ middle name. The duo’s recording of Come Sleep was featured on Bitesize Proms in the UK to view the performance please visit @winsome_songs on Instagram. 

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Born in Canberra on the lands of the Ngunnawal people, Katrina graduated from the ANU and Canberra School of Music with a Bachelor of Laws (hons), a Bachelor of Music and a Post-Graduate Diploma (voice) winning the concerto prize and performing Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with orchestra under the baton of Nicolette Fraillon. Prizes from the Australian Singing Competition enabled Katrina to study in London at the Royal College of Music’s Opera School.  

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Katrina is currently undertaking a PhD at the ANU. Her research interests focus on the lived experience of female performers, and the visibility and value of female creative artists in mid-career and beyond.  To see more of Katrina's research please visit www.buildingbrunhilde.com or follow on instagram @building_brunnhilde.

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