Meagan Miller

Meagan Miller is a soprano who has performed on opera, recital and concert stages all over the world.

Early life

Miller was born in Wilmington, DE and grew up in West Chester OH, and Chadds Ford, PA. As a high school student at Archmere Academy, Miller was exposed to much classical music, and also studied German intensely. She was selected for the 1991 Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, an experience that formed her goal to be a professional singer. Miller attended Washington and Lee University in Lexingon, VA for two years, where she performed her first operatic role, the Countess in Mozart's the Marriage of Figaro, and also gave her first solo recital. Miller then transferred to the Juilliard School in New York City, where she received her bachelor's degree, then continued her studies with the Juilliard Opera Center. Her major teachers during her education were Mary Ellen Schauber, Dan Pressley, Josepha Gayer, and Cynthia Hoffmann. During recent years, she has also studied with Ruth Falcon and Kammersaengerin Hilde Zadek.

Career

In June of 2009, Meagan Miller made a celebrated European operatic debut as Ariadne in the Vienna Volksoper's new production of Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. This has led to a new facet of her career: the leading ladies of Mozart, Strauss and Wagner in important opera houses all over the world.

Ms. Miller is the 2008 winner of George London/Kirsten Flagstad Award sponsored by the New York Community Trust. Miller was also one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1999, a competition in which many successful opera stars from the United States first reached public notice. Miller performed "Martern aller Arten" from Die Entführung aus dem Serail and "Ain't it a Pretty Night?" from Carlisle Floyd's "Susannah" with the orchestra conducted by Edoardo Muller, in a performance that The New York Times described as proving "her agility, thrust and command of intonation', with a voice that is "strong and brilliant".^[1]

An accomplished recitalist and noted interpreter of new music, Meagan Miller has appeared in more than thirty professional recitals at such notable venues as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Juilliard Theater, Steinway Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Brown University, Princeton University, the Morgan Library, Salzburg’s Schloss Leopoldskron, and the Chrysler Museum. She has premiered many works written specifically for her voice, including Libby Larsen’s Try Me Good King: The Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII and Robert Beaser’s Four Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ms. Miller has also premiered numerous works by Thomas Cipullo, Christopher Berg, and Russell Platt.

On the operatic stage, Ms. Miller has performed Mozart’s Fiordiligi, Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, Konstanze, and Countess Almaviva, as well as Verdi’s Violetta and Desdemona, Puccini’s Musetta, Gounod’s Marguerite, Johann Strauss’ Rosalinda, Gluck’s Euridice, Floyd’s Susannah, and Copland’s Laurie. Her interpretations of these roles have been applauded at the Opera Orchestra of New York, New York City Opera, Minnesota Opera, L’Opéra de Montréal, Orlando Opera, Kentucky Opera, Syracuse Opera, Eugene Opera, San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Wolf Trap Opera, the Princeton Symphony, and the Minnesota Orchestra. Ms. Miller’s other roles include Verdi's Alice Ford, Barber's Cleopatra, Strauss’ Arabella, Lehar’s Merry Widow (Hannah), and Bizet’s Micaëla.

Recent orchestral engagements have taken Ms. Miller to such venues as Hong Kong’s Cultural Center, Rotterdam’s De Dolen, the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall, and the Kennedy Center as a soloist in Beethoven’s Mass in C, Missa Solemnis, and Symphony No. 9, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem and Exsultate, jubilate, Bruckner’s Mass in f-minor, Poulenc’s Gloria, Dvorak’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. Ms. Miller has performed under the batons of Edoardo Mueller, Harry Bicket, Eiji Oue, Lawrence Foster, Randall Behr, Christopher Larkin, Stephen Lord, Joseph Rescigno, and Roger Norrington.

Ms. Miller has completed several residencies with the Marilyn Horne Foundation and the Wolf Trap Foundation, blending outreach and performance. A grand finals winner of the 1999 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Meagan Miller was named “the Outstanding Undergraduate Musician” by the Juilliard faculty, and was honored with the Juilliard Opera Center’s DeRosa Award. She has also won the Liederkranz Foundation Competition, a Richard Tucker Music Foundation Study Grant, Syracuse Opera’s Season’s Best Performance, and the Joy In Singing Award, which led to her acclaimed New York Debut recital in the fall of 1998.

Miller's art song recitals in New York have often been reviewed by The New York Times -- one example is a 2002 recital at Merkin Concert Hall, in which Miller performed a group of Richard Strauss songs that opened with "Das Rosenband" (Op. 36, No. 1), and also included "Meinem Kinde" (Op. 37, No. 3) and "Ständchen" (Op. 17, No. 2). Miller performed Francis Poulenc's Trois Poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin and Métamorphoses, and Claude Debussy's early Proses Lyriques, followed by Robert Beaser's Four Dickinson Songs. The New York Times described Miller as "an agreeably flexible interpreter" with "considereable communicative powers" who sang "with a combination of gracefulness and energy that got to the core of the music she offered".^[2]

References

1. ^ Griffiths, Paul. Music Review, "Contest, Yes, but a Contest Among Equals", The New York Times, April 15, 1999.
2. ^ Koznin, Allan. "Music in Review; Meagan Miller", The New York Times, May 24, 2002. Accessed October 29, 2008.

External links

• Meagan Miller website

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