full biography

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Praised by The Guardian for her “irrepressible sense of drama and unmissable, urgent musicality”, Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean is passionate about curation and programming, with a broad repertoire that encompasses contemporary music, art song, chamber music, early music, opera, oratorio and non-classical collaborations. Lotte is an Ambassador of Donne, a charitable foundation dedicated to promoting gender equality in the music industry, and in 2022 she was named as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, an honour reserved for alumni who have contributed significantly to the music industry.

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Lotte has established herself as a leading interpreter of new music, having given the world premieres of over 30 works and performed at many of the major festivals and venues around the UK, in Australia and internationally. Performance highlights include her debut with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis in Stravinsky Perséphone, Dean Hamlet (State Opera of South Australia) Pirates of Penzance (Opera Holland Park) and Pierrot Lunaire (Manchester Collective), a work she repeats this year in Köln and Brisbane. Recent 21-22 music festival appearances include Festival Musica Sacra Maastricht, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Aldeburgh, Swaledale, Llandeilo and Petworth Festivals, Britten Pears Festival of New, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Festival Llums D’Antiga Barcelona, and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Recent operatic work includes her Spanish debut in Dido and Aeneas (Sorceress) for International Bach Festival Gran Canaria and Theodora (Irene) at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, and the 22-23 season saw her Swiss debut at Grand Théâtre de Genève in Shlomowitz’ Electric Dreams and at Kings Place with Explore Ensemble. Future plans include a Wigmore Hall recital with Armida Quartet, Gwyl Machynlleth Festival, Linos Festival, Oxford Song, and her debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Weinberg’s Die Passagierin (Vlasta).

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Lotte has also performed at UK venues including St John’s Smith Square, St Martin in the Fields, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, Conway Hall, Wiltshire Music Centre, The Wallace Collection, Handel & Hendrix House, St James’ Palace and Colston Hall Bristol, and other festival appearances include Buxton International Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Barbican Centre Sound Unbound, Glasgow Cathedral Festival, Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, Lewes Festival of Song, Two Moors Festival, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Gower Festival, Dartington Festival and Tête-à-Tête Opera. Australian festivals and venues include the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Recital Centre, Dark Mofo, Ten Days On The Island, Adelaide Festival, Australian Festival of Chamber Music and Port Fairy Festival. Prior to moving to the UK, Lotte sang numerous principal roles in predominantly contemporary operas with Sydney Chamber Opera (world premiere of Michael Smetanin’s Mayakovsky) and Victorian Opera (including covering Nancy T’ng in Adam’s Nixon in China) , after debuting with VO as El Trujaman in De Falla's El retablo de Maese Pedro while still an undergraduate student.

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Alongside pianist Joseph Havlat, Lotte won the 2019 Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform and subsequently gave a recital at the 2019 Oxford Lieder Festival — Lotte has returned to the festival every year since. Together they have performed many wide-reaching programmes of song and new music, including several outings of Messiaen’s largest vocal work Harawi ; a performance recently described by the Irish Times as ‘absorbing…distinctive, pointed and consistently beautiful.’ Other major works performed in 2022/23 include Peter Maxwell Davies’ monodrama The Medium, Ligeti Sippal dobbal nadihegedüvel, Crumb American Songbook IV: Wings of Destiny, Cage Litany of the Whale, Nono La fabrica illuminata, Pärt Stabat Mater, Lamb Parallaxis Forma, and the WP of Brett Dean Madame Ma Bonne Soeur.

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Lotte won the 2017 Peter Hulsen Orchestral Song Award, the inaugural 2018 Musician’s Company New Elizabethan Award, and most recently, the 2020 Overseas Prize and the 2020 Audrey Strange Memorial Prize for an outstanding singer at the Royal Over-Seas League Competition. Lotte reached the semi finals of the 2017 Das Lied International Song Competition in Heidelberg as well as the 2017 Wigmore Hall Song Competition alongside pianist Hannah Harnest. While still in Australia, Lotte won several awards and competitions including the Acclaim Awards MCM Prize (2014), the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Aria (2012), the Mietta Song Competition (runner up, 2012) the National Liederfest (runner up, 2012 and 2017) and several prizes while a student at Melbourne Conservatorium.

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Lotte is a regular collaborator with various chamber groups in the UK and Australia, including EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, Explore Ensemble, Ensemble x.y, Ligeti Quartet, Armida Quartet, Marsyas Trio, La Vaghezza Baroque, Rubiks Collective, Dots+Loops Brisbane, The Song Company, Van Diemen’s Band, and previously as Associate Artist with Southbank Sinfonia. She has also performed as soloist with English Chamber Orchestra, Bath Bach Choir. Manchester Collective, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, among others, and non-classical collaborations include recording with Luke Abbott/Jack Wyllie (2023) and tours with DJ Pete Tong (2018) and electronic duo The Presets (2014). Lotte is a Young Artist alumnus of Britten Pears Arts (2022), Musician’s Company (2019), Imogen Cooper Music Trust (2018), City Music Foundation (2017) and the Tait Memorial Trust (2019), as well as Oxford Lieder (2019). She has participated in and led workshops for the composition departments of Oxford University, Southampton University, City University, Guildhall, Royal Academy of Music and the Cornelius Cardew Trust.

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Throughout the pandemic, Lotte remained very musically active with online performances, creating over 25 pieces of content, interviews and recitals for several venues, festivals and pop-up organizations including Home Concert Club, Living Room Live, Bitesize Proms, Tait Tuesdays At Home, OperaHarmony, Bishopsgate Institute, OnJam and Gondwana Voices. Selections of the aforementioned content can be found on the video page. She was also featured in one of the first ever post-lockdown live-streamed recitals (with City Music Foundation).

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Lotte is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music (MA with Distinction) and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (BMus 2012). She also completed a Fellowship at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in 2014. While at RAM, Lotte was a member of Song Circle and a soloist for the popular Bach Cantata Series, performed in masterclasses with Sir Thomas Allen, Bengt Forsberg and Dame Felicity Lott, and was supported by the Josephine Baker Trust. She has also studied in Milan (Accademia Teatro alla Scala), privately in New York, and at the 2016 Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt with Donatienne Michel-Dansac and the Vokalsolisten Stuttgart. Teachers and coaches have included Anna Connolly, Catherine Benson, Audrey Hyland and Caitlin Hulcup, and masterclasses as a Britten Pears Young Artist have included Dame Ann Murray, James Baillieu, Susan Manoff and Roderick Williams.

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Her performances have been broadcast on radio around the world including BBC Radio 3, NDR Kultur, RTÉ lyric, ABC Classic FM, and WQXR NY, and she was named one of Limelight Magazine’s Young Classical Stars 2021. She has been featured on several albums, most recently her debut with Delphian Records in collaboration with Stuart MacRae, as well as releases for NAXOS (Philippos Tsalahouris with Dimitris Soukaras) Tall Poppies (Katy Abbott with Ormond Quartet), Ensemble Q Live (Berio Folksongs) and Winter & Winter (Fumio Yasuda Ekecheiria with EXAUDI). Further albums are due for release on Divine Art Metier (with Michael Finnissy, Marsyas Trio and Joseph Havlat) BIS Records (with Brett Dean) Another Timbre (with Explore Ensemble) and Delphian (with Arthur Keegan, James Girling and Ligeti Quartet).

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Alongside Australian violinist Bridget O’Donnell-Abbado and the Tait Memorial Trust, Lotte organized and programmed the Australian Bushfire Benefit London at the Royal Academy of Music shortly before the pandemic, involving major Australian artists Simone Young, Stuart Skelton and Amy Dickson. The event raised over £40,000 for the Australian Bushfire Relief effort.

La Compañía: Destino Mexicano

Lotte features on an album of late-Renaissance Mexican songs alongside tenor Daniel Thomson and the La Compania Renaissance Band, directed by Danny Lucin. Recorded in Melbourne and released in 2014, this album was praised by several publications including Gramophone Magazine, International Record Review UK, Early Music Oxford Journal OUP, and Historic Brass Society US.

Australian Voices: Stuart Greenbaum Mondrian Interiors

From 2011 to 2015, the Australian National Academy of Music and the Melbourne Recital Centre presented the Australian Voices concert series, celebrating significant Australian composers. Included was a programme of chamber works by Stuart Greenbaum (b. 1966). This recording, released on ANAM’s own imprint, features Greenbaum's chamber works. Lotte sings Four Finalities, a song cycle with text by Ross Baglin.

Stuart MacRae: Earth, thy cold is keen (Delphian Records)

In 2021, Stuart MacRae heard a recorded performance by Lotte of The Lif of this World, his 2008 setting of an anonymous Middle English lyric. Entranced by the way she shaped its phrases and ornamentation, he immediately began to conceive new works for her voice, solo or lightly accompanied, as well as to bring to completion several other works-in-progress. This extraordinary flurry of activity – eight vocal works completed in less than two years – is captured here, and reveals the extent to which MacRae’s recent music has expanded to embrace folk-like simplicity alongside the modernist techniques of his earlier work. Similar qualities are found in two works for the violin-and-cello duo Sequoia, while MacRae himself appears on harmonium and contributes electronics to two of the vocal solos.

SELECTED REPERTOIRE

ORATORIO/CONCERT/OPERA

ADAMS                       Nixon In China (Nancy T'ng)
BACH                          Weihnachtsoratorium ; Magnificat; Mattheuspassion; Johannespassion; _ Mass in G BWV 236; Cantatas BWV 199, 84, 70, 85, 165, 82
BEETHOVEN               Symphony No 9
BRITTEN                      A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hermia)
CHARPENTIER             Messe de Minuit

DEAN Hamlet (Semi chorus)
DE FALLA                     El retablo de Maese Pedro (El Trujaman- The Boy Narrator); El Sombrero -_ de Tres Picos; El Amor Brujo
ELGAR                        The Music Makers ; Sea Pictures
FAURE                        Tantum Ergo
HANDEL                    Messiah, Giulio Cesare (Sesto); Ariodante; Theodora; Hercules (Dejanira)
HAYDN                     Harmoniemesse; Stabat Mater; Paukenmesse
MAHLER                    Kindertotenlieder; Rückert-Lieder
MENDELSSOHN       Elijah
MILLS                       The Magic Pudding (Premiere- Benjamin) 
MOZART                  Kroenungsmesse; Requiem; Laudate Dominum; Le Nozze di Figaro _ (Cherubino); Don Giovanni (Donna Elvira); Cosi fan tutte (Dorabella)
RAMEAU                  Hippolyte et Aricie (Phedre) ; Castor et Pollux (Phebe) ; La lyre enchantée
ROGEON                La Danse de Jean Francois (World premiere)
SAINT SAENS         Oratorio De Noel

SCHLOMOWITZ Electric Dreams (Mezzo Role)
SMETANIN             Mayakovsky (World Premiere- Elsa)

STRAVINSKY Perséphone (narrator)
TCHAIKOVSKY        Eugene Onegin (Filipyevna, Olga)
VIVALDI                   Gloria

WEILL Walt Whitman Songs

CHAMBER MUSIC
BACH                      Solo Cantata BWV 199 Mein Herze schwimmt in Blut ; Solo Cantata BWV 84 _ Ich bin vergnuegt mit meinem Gluecke; Solo Cantata BWV 82 Ich habe genug _ Motets Jesu meine freude ; Komm Jesu Komm
BARBER                    Dover Beach with string quartet
BRITTEN                   Phaedra with large ensemble ; Songs from the Chinese, Folksongs
BRAHMS                  Ophelia Lieder with string quartet ; 2 Lieder op 91 with viola and piano
BERIO                       Folksongs with ensemble

BIRD Series Imposture with flute percussion and clarinet
BOULEZ                    Le marteau sans maitre with six instruments
CALIX                        Looking for Cowslips with clarinet, viola, cello, piano, electronics
COPLAND                As it fell upon a day with flute and clarinet
CRUMB                   Night of the Four Moons with flute, e-cello, percussion, banjo
CHAUSSON            Chanson Perpetuelle with string quartet and piano

DNETTO Dawn Wail for the Dead with string quartet

DOWLAND various songs with guitar and/or ensemble
ENO                        Music for Airports for vocal ensemble and instruments

FAWCETT You (S)Mother Me with string ensemble

FINNISSY Wisdom (world premiere) with flute cello and piano

GEE, E Mouthpiece 28 with clarinet, flute, violin

GELLIS, I For Peace and Country with mixed ensemble
GREENBAUM, S       Four Finalities with cor anglais and harp
HONEGGER            Paques a New York with string quartet

LANG, D death speaks with electric guitar, piano, violin ; the little match girl passion
MARTIN                   Trois chants de Noel with flute and piano

MUHLY So Many Things with string quartet

NØRGARD Day and Night with piano and cello

RAVEL Chansons madécasses with flute cello and piano
REICH                      Drumming for percussion ensemble, 2 voices and piccolo
RESPIGHI                 Il tramonto with string quartet

SCIARRINO Ultime Rose (Vanitas)
SCHUBERT               Auf dem Strom with horn and piano

SCHOENBERG Pierrot Lunaire

SOCOLOFSKY, A Hush with ensemble
SUTHERLAND          The Orange Tree with clarinet and piano
STANHOPE             Songs for the Shadowlands with wind quintet (premiere)
STRAVINSKY            Pribaoutki with ensemble, A Soldier’s Tale (narrator)
STRAUSS                  Alphorn with horn and piano

THOMSON, Q A Tasmanian Requiem with voices and brass quintet (world premiere)
TURNAGE                Twice through the heart with large ensemble (Aus premiere)

TYMOCZKO, D Ghosts (world premiere) with ensemble

WEIR Nuits d’Afrique with flute cello and piano

ZUBEL Cascando for voice flute clarinet violin and cello

ART SONG
BARBER                       Hermit Songs
BARTOK                     Oet dal, Folksong arrangements
BERG                          4 Lieder Op 2, Sieben frühe Lieder                             
BERLIOZ                     Les nuits d'ete

BERNSTEIN La bonne cuisine
BENDIX                      4 Sange Op 3
BOULANGER, L           Pie Jesu
BRAHMS                     Various lieder including Opus 32
BRIDGE                       Love went a riding
BRITTEN                      A Charm of Lullabies ; Irish, French, British Folksongs
CANTELOUBE            Chants D’Auvergne
CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO Sonetti di Petrarca, L’infinito

COPLAND Old American Songs
DAVIES (TANSY)          Destroying Beauty ; Troubairitz (excerpts)
DEAN, B               Poems and Prayers ; Gertrude Fragments (world premiere)
DEBUSSY                     Trois Chansons de Bilitis; Ariettes Oubliées; Fêtes Galantes; Trois Chants _ _ de France; Trois Poèmes de Stephane Mallarmé
DVORAK                       Biblical Songs; Gypsy Songs
FAURE                          Various melodie

FINNISSY Andersen-Liederkreis (excerpts)
GADE                          Sneedronningen and other songs
GRIEG                          Haugtussa, Norge Op 54, Hjertets Melodier, Romanser Op 15
HAHN                          Various melodie
HARVEY, J                    Ah Sunflower

HONEGGER Trois chansons de la petite Sirene ; Petit cours de morale
IVES                             Various songs
JANACEK                     Selections from Moravska lidova poezie v pisnich

JOBIM Various bossa nova songs
KOCH, von                   Exotiska Sanger
KORNGOLD                 Sonett fuer Wien op 41 ; 4 Lieder des Abschieds Op 14
LISZT                             Various lieder
MAHLER, A                   5 Lieder
MEDTNER                     Various songs
MESSIAEN                   Poemes pour Mi; Trois Melodies; Harawi; Chants de terre et de ciel
POULENC                    Fiancailles pour rire; Trois chansons de Louise de Vilmorin; other
PURCELL                        Various songs

PROKOFIEV Gadkiy utyonok (The Ugly Duckling)
RACHMANINOFF         Various songs
RAVEL                            Histoires Naturelles; 4 Melodies Populaires grecques; Chansons _ _ madécasses; Chants populaires
RAUTAVAARA                Maailman Uneen 3 Songs
REGER                          Geistliches Lied, various lieder
RESPIGHI                      Sei Liriche

SATIE Trois mélodies ; Je te veux
SCHREKER                    5 Gesänge für tiefe Stimme
SCHUBERT                    Various lieder including Die junge Nonne, Der Zwerg, Suleika1 SCHUMANN                Frauenliebe Und Leben ; 4 Lieder after HC Andersen ; various other
SCHOENBERG             Das Buch der Haengenden Garten ; Brettl-Lieder, 4 Lieder Op2
SHOSTAKOVICH           Spanish Songs op 100
SIBELIUS                        5 sanger Op 37
TCHAIKOVSKY              Various Songs
WEBERN                        4 Lieder Op 12
WEILL                             Various songs
WEIR, J                           Songs from the Exotic
WOLF                             Various lieder including Spanisches Liederbuch

YIU, R Love Songs for Manuela (World premiere)
ZEMLINSKY                    Irmelin Rose und andere Gesaenge op 7