Meg Bragle, mezzo-soprano

Widely praised for her musical intelligence, “memorable, raw-silk voice” (Toronto Star) and “expressive virtuosity” (San Francisco Chronicle), Meg Bragle is quickly earning an international reputation as one of today’s most gifted and versatile mezzo-sopranos.

Bragle has sung in North America and Europe with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Apollo’s Fire, as well as with the symphony orchestras of Memphis, San Antonio, Charlotte, Akron, North Carolina, and Nova Scotia. She has performed repertoire by Franz Schubert, Antonio Vivaldi, Johannes Brahms, and Stephen Foster with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and she is a frequent featured soloist with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra and English Baroque Soloists. She toured Europe with them to Bachfest Leipzig, the Prague Spring Festival, and the Aldeburgh and Brighton Festivals, and will reunite with them in the 2013 season for a tour of Australia.

Recent and upcoming highlights include her role debut in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Calgary Philharmonic; a debut with Bernard Labadie and Les Violons du Roy in Alessandro Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater; debuts with the Toronto Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic in Handel’s Messiah; Bach cantatas with the Montreal-based Arion Ensemble led by Jaap ter Linden at the Bach Montréal festival; a Bach St. John Passion in Geneva; Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Voices of Music in San Francisco, and her National Arts Centre Orchestra debut with Messiah.

Her opera roles include Dido and the Sorceress in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Dardano in Handel’s Amadigi, Amastre in Handel’s Serse, Speranza in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Ippolita in Cavalli’s Elena, and Elpina in Vivaldi’s La Fida Ninfa. Bragle has made several recordings with Apollo’s Fire: Mozart’s Requiem (Koch), Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine (Avie), L’Orfeo (Eclectra), and the forthcoming Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (Koch). Other recordings include Cozzolani’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and Messa Paschale with Magnificat (Musica Omnia), Music of Medieval Love with New York’s Ensemble for Early Music (Ex Cathedra), Toby Twining’s Chrysalid Requiem (Cantaloupe), Anthony Newman’s Requiem (Khaeon World Music) and Copland’s In the Beginning with John Scott and the Men and Boy Choir of St. Thomas Fifth Avenue and the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte on their own labels.

Bragle studied violin and voice at the University of Michigan before earning a bachelor of musical arts degree in Voice Performance and English and completing a master’s degree in Choral Conducting from Michigan State University. She is the recipient of several awards and recognition from Symphony Magazine, the American Bach Society, the Carmel Bach Festival and the Bethlehem Bach Festival. Visit Meg Bragle on the web at www.megbragle.com