The mezzo-soprano Nora Sourouzian had big success as Azucena (“Il trovatore”) and Ježibaba (“Rusalka”) in St. Gallen and with the Verdi Requiem in Aarhus in the 2019/20 season. Other contracts, such as Carmen in Winnipeg, Eboli at the Aalto Theatre in Essen, Azucena in Daegu (South Corea) or a Japan tour with Beethoven’s 9th symphony with the Beethoven orchestra Bonn under Dirk Kaftan fell victim to the corona virus. Future engagements include the part of Floria in “Les barbares” by Camille Saint-Saëns at the Leipzig Opera and concerts with Schönberg’s “Lied der Waldtaube” in Denmark.
Highlights of the years 2017-19 included Azucena in Verdi’s “Il trovatore” at the Graz Opera, the Aalto Theater in Essen, the Royal Danish Opera House in Copenhagen and the Seattle Opera House, the role of Marguerite in “La damnation du Faust” at the Teatro Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the alto solo in Franck Martin’s Cornet with the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève or Mahler’s 3rd Symphony with the Orquesta Nacional de Chile.
A great actress and singer, Nora Sourouzian was always offered a broad variety of roles and musical styles: At the Wexford Festival she celebrated a huge success in the two title roles of the rarely performed Massenet operas “Thérèse” and “La Navarraise” (as Anita, la Navarraise) and returned there as Herodias (A. Mariotte, “Salome”). At the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing she sang the part of Zulema in Théodore Dubois “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 which later led her to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich as cover for Elina Garanca. She made her role debut as Princess Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” at the Festival Opera Burg Gars. As Carmen, Nora Sourouzian performed at the West Palm Beach Opera in Miami, at the Minnesota Opera. For this part she was also engaged as cover for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The two roles of Sister Helen Prejean and Mrs. Patrick De Rocher (Joseph’s mother) in Jake Heggie’s opera “Dead Man Walking” at the Royal Opera Copenhagen to stage maturity.
Nora Sourouzian’s discography includes a CD recording of the production of Théodore Dubois “Aben Hamet”, conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire, a DVD of the opera “O rapaz de bronze” by Nuno Côrte-Real, and a CD and DVD of the 34th Opera Gala of the Montreál Opera from 2009.
Conductors such as Cyril Diedrich, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Marc Minkowski, Leif Segerstam, Ed Spanjaard, Franz Welser-Möst or Johannes Wildner repeatedly invited Nora Sourouzian to concerts with works such as Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, his Songs of a Wayfarer, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the Haydn cantata Arianna a Naxos, the Mozart Requiem, the Brahms love song waltz, Berlioz “Nuits d’été”, Franck Martin’s oratorio “Golgotha” or Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder.
Nora Sourouzian won a number of major Canadian singing competitions and was a finalist in the Belvedere Competition in Vienna. Invitations to many large opera houses followed, such as the Zurich Opera House, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Opéra de Lausanne, the St. Gallen Opera House, the Opera House of Zurich and the Opera House of Zurich. Gallen, Opéra du Châtelet Paris, Teatro Sao Paolo Lisbon, De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam, Det Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Den Norske Opera Oslo, Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, Riga Opera House, Leipzig Opera, the Cologne Opera, the Teatro Communale di Bologna, the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, the opera houses of Quebec and Montréal or the New National Theatre Tokyo.
Nora Sourouzian is French-Canadian, studied at McGill University in Montreal with Thérèse Sevadjian and was then a member of the Young Artists Program of the Internationaal Opera Centrum Nederland in Amsterdam for one year. She then became a member of the ensemble at the Staatstheater Kassel for two years. She lives in Berlin.
