Mezzo-soprano Nora Sourouzian is equally compelling on the opera stage and in the concert hall: Following a highly acclaimed performance as Azucena in Il trovatore at the Staatstheater Braunschweig, where she subsequently also appeared as Prioress Madame de Croissy in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, she sang the mezzo-soprano part in Verdi’s Requiem under Leo McFall as part of the International May Festival at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden and was invited back for a recital during the current season. At the Graz Opera, she will sing the role of Giulietta and the voice of the Mother in Les contes d’Hoffmann in 2026.
More recently, Nora Sourouzian has enjoyed success in roles such as Amneris at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen and in an Arena production of Aida in Stuttgart, Hanover, and Berlin, as well as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Mexico. In addition, the mezzo-soprano has also portrayed roles such as Ježibaba in Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Komische Oper Berlin, at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg, and in St. Gallen, Eboli in Don Carlo in Essen, and gave compelling performances in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and with Schoenberg’s Lied der Waldtaube from the Gurrelieder with the Sønderjylland Symphony Orchestra, as Amneris in Verdi’s Aida at the Jyske Opera, and at the Braunschweig Opera as Marguerite in La damnation du Faust at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico. She has also portrayed the role of Azucena at the Graz Opera, the Aalto Theater in Essen, the Seattle Opera, and the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen.
Nora Sourouzian has previously demonstrated her wide range of acting and vocal abilities in a variety of roles and musical styles: At the Wexford Festival, she enjoyed great success in the title roles of Fauré’s Pénélope, as well as in the rarely performed Massenet operas Thérèse and La Navarraise (as Anita), and returned there as Herodias (A. Mariotte, Salomé). At the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing, she sang the role of Zulema in Théodore Dubois’s Aben Hamet. St. Gallen engaged her as Laura in Ponchielli’s La gioconda and as Leonora di Guzman in Donizetti’s La favorita, a role that later led her to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich as an understudy for Elīna Garanča. She made her role debut as Princess Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo at the Oper Burg Gars Festival. As Carmen, Nora Sourouzian has appeared in 22 productions, including at the West Palm Beach Opera in Miami, in St. Gallen, Cagliari, Bologna, Cologne, Leipzig, Oslo, Québec, and Cardiff. She was also engaged as an understudy for this role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She brought the two roles of Sister Helen Prejean and Mrs. Patrick De Rocher (Joseph’s mother) in Jake Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking to the stage at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen.
Nora Sourouzian’s discography includes, among other works, a CD recording of Théodore Dubois’s Aben Hamet, conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire; a DVD of the opera O rapaz de bronze by Nuno Côrte-Real; and a CD/DVD of the 34th Opera Gala of the Montreal Opera from 2009.
Conductors such as Paolo Carignani, Cyril Diedrich, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Marc Minkowski, Leif Segerstam, Ed Spanjaard, Franz Welser-Möst, and Johannes Wildner have repeatedly invited Nora Sourouzian to perform in concerts featuring works such as Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 Symphony or Songs of a Wayfarer, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Haydn’s cantata Arianna a Naxos, Mozart’s Requiem, Brahms’s Liebesliederwalzer, Berlioz’s Nuits d’été, Frank Martin’s Cornet, his oratorio Golgotha, or Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder.
Nora Sourouzian has won a number of major Canadian singing competitions and was a finalist in the Belvedere Competition in Vienna. This led to invitations to perform at many major opera houses, including the Zurich Opera House, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Opéra de Lausanne, the St. Gallen Opera House, the Opéra du Châtelet in Paris, the Teatro São Paulo in Lisbon, De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Den Norske Opera in Oslo, the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, the Riga Opera House, the Leipzig Opera, the Cologne Opera, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, the opera houses of Québec and Montréal, and the New National Theatre in Tokyo.
Nora Sourouzian comes from a French-Armenian family, holds French and Canadian citizenship, studied at McGill University in Montreal, and was then a member of the Young Artists Program at the Internationaal Opera Centrum Nederland in Amsterdam. She subsequently spent two years as a member of the ensemble at the Staatstheater Kassel. She lives in Berlin.
05/2026
