With a unique personal narrative beginning in Fairbanks, Alaska, and an international career now spanning more than two decades, mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux beguiles audiences and critics alike with her charisma, dedication, and astounding vocal technique.<<cut>>Via opera, concert, and recital engagements in 2021, Vivica visits some of the world’s most prestigious venues. Featuring music by Johann Adolf Hasse, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Johann David Heinichen, and Johann Georg Pisendel, The Court of Dresden with Vespres d’Arnadí arrives in Madrid, Oviedo, and Barcelona in May, followed by Pyrotechnies: de Vivaldi à Piazzolla with Gabetta Consort at Froville’s Festival de musique sacrée et baroque. Vivica then visited Linz for her rôle début as Deceit in a performance of Händel’s The Triumph of Time and Truth with Bach Consort Wien.
Il divino Sassone, a programme featuring arias and instrumental music from operas by Hasse in which she partners with Lautten Compagney Berlin, was performed at the 2020 Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival. Vivica figured prominently in Theater an der Wien’s 2019/20 Season, being scheduled to appear in three concert performances. Also in 2020, Vivica took her Porpora vs. Haendel programme with Les Musiciens du Louvre to the Valletta Baroque Festival.
Vivica welcomed 2019 with Farinelli-themed concerts with Concerto de’ Cavalieri and Marcello Di Lisa in Antwerp and Valletta. Later she joined La magnifica comunità and Enrico Casazza for Sulla Via della Seta, a programme featuring music by Domenico Gallo, Händel, Hasse, and Vivaldi. 2019 found her first in Poissy and Bilbao with Les Musiciens du Louvre and then in Karlsruhe for Internationale Händel-Festspiele's Händel-Gala, in which she was joined by mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg in performances of music by Vivaldi, Händel, Rossini, and Bellini. In 2019, Vivica and Bach Consort Wien took a Vivaldi programme to Vienna’s storied Musikverein.
Vivica’s professional début was in 1994, when she interpreted Isabella in a Florentine Opera production of Gioachino Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri, a part that she reanimated to great acclaim in 2015 for Opera Fairbanks. Her 1997 début at New York’s Metropolitan Opera was in her most-performed rôle, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and she returned to the MET for more performances as Rosina in 2002. In the wake of those milestones, Rossini rôles have taken Vivica to theatres throughout the world. Her Angelina in La Cenerentola has been heard in her native USA in cities including Charlotte, West Palm Beach, and Washington, DC, and internationally in locations ranging from the prestigious Grand Théâtre de Genève, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and Wiener Staatsoper to Bremen, Rieti, and Santiago. Singing both female heroines and male travesti rôles, Vivica has amassed a repertory of nine Rossini characters, one of her favorites among whom, Malcolm in La donna del lago, she revisited in concert at the Salzburger Pfingsfestspiele in June 2017.
A cornerstone of Vivica’s extensive Baroque repertory is the music of Johann Adolf Hasse, whose works she champions in performance and on disc. In 2017, the rôle of Piramo in Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe took her to Budapest, Vienna, and Valencia for performances with Europa Galante. 2017 also witnessed her rôle débuts as Lepido in Händel’s Lucio Cornelio Silla, presented in concert at Wiener Konzerthaus and released on CD; as Eternità and Diana in Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto at Opéra national du Rhin; and as Arsamene in Händel's Serse at Opéra de Versailles. Other recent additions to Vivica’s operatic repertoire include Emilia in Antonio Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica and Junon in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon, the latter sung in a double bill with Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, presented by Les Talens Lyriques in Beaune, France, Acre, Israel, and Paris's Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 2016.
The winner of coveted prizes including a 1997 ARIA Award, New York City Opera’s 2007 Christopher Keene Award, and Pittsburgh Opera's 2008 Maecenas Award, Vivica is the 2017 recipient of the City of Halle’s prestigious Händel-Preis, which was formally awarded in June 2017. In January 2019, she received the Hasse-Preis of the Johann Adolf Hasse-Stiftung.