Laura Alonso

Early life and education

Born in Vilagarcía de Arousa (Galicia, Spain), Alonso earned university diplomas in both singing and the violin in her native country before pursuing further studies in Germany. A scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enabled her to study voice under Aldo Baldin, Anna Reynolds and Jean Cox and lied with Hartmut Höll at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe.

Career

In 1999, at 23 years of age, Alonso became a member of the Aalto Theatre in Essen, Germany. Over the past decade she has sung numerous roles with that opera house, including Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto, Mimí in Puccini's La bohème, Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Zdenka in Richard Strauss' Arabella among others. She is the recipient of the Aalto Theatre's Best Artist Award and performed at the theatre for the 2010 European City of Culture festivities.

As a guest artist, Alonso has made appearances at numerous concert venues and theatres internationally. In Europe she has sung at leading theatres in Pisa, Düsseldorf, Mannheim, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Nancy, Braunschweig, Poissy, Freiburg, Lübeck, Barcelona, and Breno. Her performance credits also include appearances at the Auditorium in Rishon Le Zion (Israel), Teatro Bellas Artes in Mexico, Teatro de Guanajuato, Philharmonie de Cologne, Musikhalle in Hamburg, Konzerthaus and Philharmonie in Berlin, Karlsruhe, Dortmund and Essen, Kuppel Saal in Hannover (Germany), Herodes Aticus in Athens, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Los Angeles Auditorium, Palau de Valencia and Barcelona, among others. She has performed with several important conductors, including Frühbeck de Burgos, Heiko Matthias Förster, Philipp Jordan, Carlos Kalmar, Jiri Kôut, Ion Marin, Víctor Pablo Pérez, Zoltan Peszko, and Stefan Soltesz. Some of the other opera roles in her repertoire include Antonia, Zerbinetta, Susanna, Oscar, Lucia, Lulu, Giulia, Nannetta, Sophie, Elvira, Amina, and Violetta in La traviata.

She has collaborated with stage directors as A. Pilavachi, De Tomasi, Johannes Schaaf, Pontiggia, Berndt, Schlingensief o Hilsdorf at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Tenerife Festivals, at the Festival in Royaumont, Bregenzer Festspiele, Maestranza in Sevilla, at the Expo in Hannover, Innsbrucker Festwochen, Ille de France Festival, Santander Festival, at the Autumn Festival in Madrid and the Opera Week in Berlin, among other musical events.

She sang Giulia in La scala di seta, performed during a tour with the Freiburger Barockorchester under the baton of Attilio Cremonesi. At the Berlin Staatsoper she appeared in with Ariadne auf Naxos. With her debut at the Innsbruck Festival (Austria) in the role of Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare in Egitto by Antonio Sartorio, she won the Diapason D'or, awarded by the French critics; the a recording of the performance was issued on compact disc.

Other achievements include her role as Magda in La rondine, which she performed in Utrecht (Netherlands) with the T.R.O.S. and Gómez Martínez as conductor, as well as her Salzburg performance in the role of Sandrina, in La finta giardiniera, on the occasion of the Mozart Year 2006 with Doris Dörrie as stage manager.

Other recent performances have taken place in Santander and La Coruña with the opera Carmen and also in La Coruña the Spanish premiere of The Rescue of Penelope by Britten.

She has performed in some of the most important auditoriums and theatres in Spain, and at the end of 2007, she sang belcanto repertoire in the Opera Hall at Valladolid Auditorium, with the conductor Alejandro Posada and Canarian tenor Celso Albelo with duets and arias from Lakmé, Rigoletto, Elisir d'amore and Semiramide, alongside the Symphony Orchestra of Castilla y León.

She devotes most of the year to giving recitals and concerts. Next music key events are a Liederabend at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid, and another one at the Auditorio Conde Duque with the conductor Manuel Burgueras, as well as several Spanish music concerts in the United States.

Her most ambitious recording project was the belcanto arias album Col sorriso d'innocenza, in collaboration with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Malaga, which was published in December 2006.

The record label Columna Musica has recently released her CD collection of Galician songs Lúa descolorida, and another one will be released shortly with Spanish repertoire.

She has played the leading role as Rosario in her debut of the work Goyescas by Enrique Granados in 2009.

She has recently toured the main cities in Germany alongside the Chilean tenor Felipe Rojas, accompanied by the orchestra Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, singing exclusively Spanish zarzuelas.

She will make her debut in Alice Tully Hall in New York in November with the opera Las horas vacías (The Empty Hours) by Ricardo Llorca.

Recently she has performed with the Symphony of Egypt. She also toured the most important theatres in China. Last May she played the role of Violetta in La traviata at the opera theatre in Darmstadt. She has also interpreted Lucia di Lammermoor in Illinois, likewise the role of Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart, in Illinois too.

Awards

At the Aalto Theatre in Essen (Germany), she received the Best Artist Award, by popular acclaim, and she has sung again during the Ruhr 2010 European Capital of Culture in Essen in a lyric gala at the Aalto Theatre.

Alonso has won several singing awards at international competitions, among which we can highlight her first prize in the last Alfredo Kraus Competition as well as the Franco Corelli, Verviers or Jaume Aragall competitions.

With her début at the Innsbruck Festival (Austria) in the role of Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare by Antonio Sartorio, she won the Diapason d'Or, awarded by the French critics.

Furthermore, Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998, has given Laura Alonso Padín the price as the best singer of the Aalto Theatre in Germany 1998.

Discography