Simone Kermes

Soprano Simone Kermes studied with Helga Forner in her hometown of Leipzig and attended master classes with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In 1993, she won first prize at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition in Berlin, and in 1996, she was awarded the Bach Prize at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig. She has performed as Mozart's Konstanze, Fiordiligi, and Donna Anna, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Stravinsky's Anne Trulove, and Handel's Alcina at venues including the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Paris, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, and the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos Lisbon. Concert engagements have taken her to Carnegie Hall New York, the Berkeley Festival, Opera City Hall Tokyo, the Barbican Centre London, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Dresden Music Festival, and Resonanzen Wien, among others. She has performed with orchestras and ensembles such as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, Musica Antiqua Köln, Ensemble Mattheus, and Concerto Köln. In these performances, she has collaborated with conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Leopold Hager, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Lothar Zagrosek, Andrea Marcon, Reinhard Goebel, and Jean-Christophe Spinosi. Simone Kermes' CD productions encompass works from Vivaldi to Humperdinck. Recordings in which she has participated – for example, as Ottone in Vivaldi's Griselda or in Haydn's Creation – have received awards such as the Diapason d’Or, the German Record Critics' Award, and the Echo Klassik. For Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, Simone Kermes, together with Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra, released two solo CDs featuring music by Vivaldi, Amor sacro and Amor profano. She also participated in the Vivaldi release Andromeda liberata and sings the title role in Handel's Rodelinda with Il Complesso Barocco and Alan Curtis as conductor.