Biography
In the 2023/2024 season, British soprano Belinda Williams, will be making her role debut as Suor Angelica, returning to the role of Donna Anna in France, and taking her award winning Fringe show Show:Girls to the Edinburgh Festival.
In recent seasons, Belinda has appeared as Gertrud in Hänsel und Gretel in Wuppertal, conducted by musical director Julia Jones and directed by Denis Krief, and the following season Belinda returned to Wuppertal as Theseus’ Mother in the German premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Das Labyrinth. At Staatstheater Kassel, Belinda was Offenbach’s eponymous Die Großherzogin von Gerolstein and recently made her debut as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
Belinda began her career as a mezzo-soprano, making her European debut as Dorabella at the Staatstheater Kassel in 2012 shortly after graduating from the Royal Academy Opera Course. Her debut appearance won her the Nachwuchsförderpreis for best young talent and she was immediately invited to join the ensemble in Kassel, where Belinda stayed for 5 seasons singing roles including Hänsel, Orlofsky, Annina, Maddalena, and Baba the Turk. Belinda used the cancelled 2020-21 season to transition into a soprano, under the expert tutelage of Janice Chapman and was named the Women's Radio Classic Future Woman of the Year 2021.
Belinda was born in London and graduated with distinction in 2012 from the Royal Academy of Music Opera Course, where she studied with Ryland Davies, supported by RAM and Countess of Munster Trust awards. Belinda has also trained with ENO, at Trinity College of Music, and privately with Yvonne Minton, and is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, a Samling Scholar, a Tillett Trust Young Artist, a Park Lane Group Young Artist, and a Countess of Munster Trust Recitalist. In 2014, Belinda was chosen to be a scholar and recitalist at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.
Belinda made her Wigmore Hall debut recital in 2010 whilst still a young student after winning the Tillett Trust Young Artists’ Competition. As an award-winning recitalist, Belinda has performed at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Hollywell Music Rooms, Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Cheltenham Pump Rooms, Cheltenham Town Hall, and Handel House, and works regularly with Prof. David Owen Norris with whom she has a CD Songs and Sonnets from the Reign of Queen Victoria. At her Purcell Room debut recital in 2012, Belinda premiered new works by Thea Musgrave, about which Neil Fisher of The Times declared: “Williams played a blinder … her presence was undeniable, and her big, rich tone practically Ferrier-esque, from its powerful top to its smoky bottom”.
Other UK performances have included, Carmen at Sadler's Wells directed by James Hurley and conducted by John Andrews; at Buxton Opera, cover Storge in Jephtha (Handel) with Harry Christophers & Frederic Wake-Walker; Princess Linette in Prokofiev's The Love for 3 Oranges at Grange Park (dir. David Fielding, cond. Leo Hussain); and returning to Grange Park as 2nd Nymph in Rusalka (dir. Antony McDonald, cond. Stephen Barlow).
Belinda is a passionate exponent of new music, having premiered many new works: the role of Li in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Kommilitonen!, directed by David Pountney (RAO); on BBC Radio 4 Belinda sang ‘Mary, Mother of God’ on Good Friday in Sasha Johnson Manning’s Daughters of Jerusalem with words by Carol-Ann Duffy; Belinda made her Italian debut singing the title role in Efraín Amaya’s new opera La Bisbetica at the Bergamo Festival; she performed the Estonian premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (cond. Olari Elts, Tallinn National Concert Hall); The Evil Queen in the German premiere of Wolfgang Mitterer's Schneewittchen; and Lovely Lady in Purcell: His Ground by David Knotts (Royal Opera House).
