Soprano Lydia Brotherton graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a B.A., Honors in Music, and completed her Masters studies in Historical Performance at Boston University. As a winner of a U.S. Fulbright performing arts grant in 2010-2011, she studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. She currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
Recent performances include Bach’s Matthäus-Passion with Berlin Baroque in the Berlin Philharmoniker; the role of Vagaus in Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans with Andrea Marcon and La Cetra Barockorchesters Basel; a European tour of Bach’s B-minor Mass with Académie baroque européene d’Ambronay under Sigiswald Kuijken; Bach’s Johannes-Passion at Aldeburgh Easter Weekend with Mark Padmore and the Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra, Handel and Bach arias with the English Concert and young harpsichordist-directors at the Foundling Museum in London, BWV 29 with Harry Christophers and the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston’s Symphony Hall, and Bach’s St. John Passion with the Harvard University Baroque Orchestra under Edward Elwyn Jones. With Martin Pearlman and the Boston University Baroque Orchestra, she sang the title role in Eccles’ opera Semele and Bach’s Wedding Cantata (BWV 202), and with Martin Pealrman, Boston Baroque and Il Furioso, Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.
Lydia has also performed with the Grammy-nominated Boston Early Music Festival in their Chamber Opera Series and bi-annual Festival, with Tragicomedia under Stephen Stubbs, the Clarion Society and New York Collegium under Steven Fox, in the Bach Cantata Series at Emmanuel Music in Boston, with Laurence Cummings and the Handel and Haydn Society, with Ensemble Phoenix Munich at the Prague Spring and other Festivals, and she has toured internationally as soloist with the Boston Camerata and the Tero Saarinen Dance Company in their production of Borrowed Light. Recent recording releases include The Rose of Sharon: 100 Years of American Music, 1770-1870 [soprano soloist] with Ensemble Phoenix Munich for Harmonia Mundi France, Virgo Sancta Caecilia: Gesange aus dem Antiphonar Anna Hachenberch with Ensemble Candens Lilium for WDR/Raumklang, Blow’s Venus & Adonis [Shepherdess] and Charpentier’s Actéon [Daphné] and La Pierre philosophale [l’Eau] with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and Chorus, directed by Stephen Stubbs and Paul O’Dette, for CPO.
Lydia has undertaken masterclasses with Harry Bicket, Paul Agnew, Andrew Parrott, and Margreet Honig. She is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, and her awards include scholarships from Early Music America and a Swiss Federal Stipendium. Her undergraduate thesis on Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was published by Brown University as a winner of the University Prize.
