DEBORAH HUMBLE

Mezzo-Soprano Deborah Humble is one of Australia’s most successful international artists.  She began her musical education in Adelaide gaining a Bachelor of Music Performance and continued her studies in Melbourne completing a Master of Music and Diplomas of Arts and Education.  In 1995, she was a Young Artist with the Victoria State Opera.

In 2002, she became a principal artist with Opera Australia where her roles included Dido (Dido and Aeneas), Mercedes (Carmen), Clarissa(The Love For Three Oranges, recorded for Chandos Records), Sonyetka (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), Rosette (Manon) and the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe.

In 2004, Deborah was awarded the prestigious Dame Joan Sutherland Scholarship and, the following year, she became a Principal Mezzo with the State Opera of Hamburg.  Her many roles for the company included Zenobia (Radamisto), Bradamante  (Alcina), Hansel (Hansel and Gretel), Page (Salome), Suzuki (Madame Butterfly), Olga (Eugene Onegin) and Malik for the German premier of Henze’s L’Upupa.

But it was for her Wagner roles in Hamburg’s Ring Cycle that she received international acclaim.  Conducted by Simone Young and directed by Claus Guth, Deborah began with Erda in Das Rheingold in 2008 and went on to sing Schwertleitein Die Walküre, Erda in Siegfried and both 1^st Norn and Waltrautein Götterdämmerung.  She recorded these roles for the Oehms record label and, in early 2011, repeated the roles in two complete cycles. 

In 2008, Deborah was a finalist in the International Wagner Competition held in Seattle.

Her international engagements include appearances with Edinburgh Festival, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg Easter Festival, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Lyric Opera, Seattle Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Hamburg Philharmonic, London Mozart Players, British Youth Opera and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, in works as diverse as Handel’s Messiah and Verdi’s Requiem.  Closer to home, she has performed with the State Opera of South Australia, Opera Queensland, the Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras and the Adelaide and Brisbane Festivals.

In 2012, Australian audiences will be able to hear Deborah as soloist with the Melbourne Symphony (Durufle’s Requiem and Lambert’s Rio Grande), the Sydney Symphony (Pique Dame) and with Opera Australia (Brigitte in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt).  She also appears in further Ring Cycles in Hamburg, Halle, Melbourne and Ludwigshafen and as Catherine in Honegger’s Jean d’Arc du Boucher in Lisbon.

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