Anna Dennis

English soprano Anna Dennis maintains dual specialties in Baroque and contemporary music. She has created several roles in new operas. Dennis studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Noelle Barker. In 1995, she sang on Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, a recording with the Chapel Choir of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Since the 2000s decade, Dennis has been a fixture of operatic and choral seasons both in Britain and abroad, singing Baroque and early Classical opera as well as modern works from Schoenberg to the present day. Her operatic roles in the 2010s and early 2020s included Romilda in Handel's Serse at the Göttingen Händel Festspiele in Germany, Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo at the Birmingham Opera Company, and the Strawberry Seller in Britten's Death in Venice at La Scala in Milan, Italy. She has appeared in all three Monteverdi operas under famed Baroque specialist John Eliot Gardiner. Dennis has been in demand for concert works, and she has appeared in Orff's Carmina Burana with the Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, and Britten's War Requiem at the Philharmonie in Berlin, among many others. Her operatic world premieres include roles in Francisco Coll's Café Kafka at three different British houses, Will Tuckett's Pleasure's Progress at the Royal Opera House, and Jonathan Dove's The Walk from the Garden at the Salisbury Festival. She has appeared at the BBC Proms with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Dennis is an avid recitalist who has appeared at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square, and other top English venues. Dennis has a substantial catalog of recordings on Harmonia Mundi, Resonus Classics, Accent, and other labels. In 2019, she released Sweeter Than Roses, a recital of Purcell songs with keyboardist Julian Perkins. The following year, she was heard on a recording of Alexander Kastalsky's Requiem with the Orchestra of St. Luke's under Leonard Slatkin; that album garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance. In 2021, Dennis returned in the title role of John Eccles' rarely heard Semele with the Academy of Ancient Music on the orchestra's AAM Records label. ~ James Manheim