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Biography
Janet Collins
was born in 1964 in Kent, England. After completing the Associate course
at the Guildhall School of
Music & Drama in London (AGSM), she studied under
Prof. Rudolf Piernay on the advanced course for opera singers at the Opera School in
Mannheim, Germany. First opera engagements followed in Bremen,
where she sang Ottla
and Milena in the world première of Stanley
Waldens Kafka-Opera Liebster Vater, and at the National Theatre
in Mannheim, where Erda in Rheingold
and Siegfried was among
her early roles. From 1997 to 2001, Janet Collins was engaged at
the
Opera House in Münster, where the roles of Carmen, Orlofsky, Erda,
Flosshilde and Waltraute (Götterdämmerung) were amongst her notable successes.
In 2000
she made her debut at the Stuttgart Opera as First Norn and Flosshilde in the
much celebrated Peter Konwitschny production of the Götterdämmerung , and
in 2001 at the Semperoper in Dresden as Flosshilde (Rheingold)
und
Waltraute (Walküre) under the baton of Semyon Bychkov.
In the following
year she was invited to the Teatro Massimo di
Bellini in Catania (Sicily)
to sing the role of Erda in Siegfried, and subsequently made her debut at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest as Carmen. A tour of Japan with the same production followed. In 2002, Janet Collins made her first appearance at the Konzertgebouw in Amsterdam as contralto soloist in the world première of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen´s Engel Prozessionen.
In 2004, she successfully sang the role of Marilyn Klinghoffer in the Rotterdam Opera O.T. production of The Death of Klinghoffer by
John Adams. At the Munich Biennale 2004, as a guest of the Stuttgarter Vokalsolisten, one of the world´s foremost contemporary music ensembles, Janet Collins performed the role of Henny Gurland in Shadowtime, the first opera by Brian Ferneyhough, one of Britain´s most highly rated living composers.
Her concert repertoire includes Mendelssohn`s Elijah, Handel`s Messiah,
Mozart`s Requiem, and Bach`s Christmas Oratorio,
Magnificat, St. John Passion and B Minor Mass, the great symphonies and orchestral songs of Gustav Mahler, Hans Pfitzner`s Von deutscher Seele, and Edward Elgar`s oratorios, The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles and The
Kingdom.
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