Margaret Chalker (Soprano)

Born: 1955 (?) - USA

The American soprano, Margaret Chalker, comes from an American family of musicians. She first studied flute and piano, originally intending to be a teacher, until her voice was discovered.

At the Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio Margaret Chalker sang her first role as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, followed by a career that took her to many concert halls and opera houses in the USA. In 1984 she performed at the Baldwin-Wallace College Bach Festival. Her career in Europe began in 1985 at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. In 1987 she made her debut at the Zürich Opera as Jemmy in a new production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. Since then she has appeared in more than twenty roles in over four hundred performances of works by Mozart, Puccini, Strauss, Wagner, Menotti and others. In 1991-1992 she sang Fiordiligi and Donna Anna, and in 1995 sang her first Donna Elvira. She has appeared as a guest artist at the State Theatres in Meiningen, Leipzig, Zürich, Dresden and Prague, with her debut in 1998 at the Hannover State Theatre. She has worked with distinguished conductors and in contemporary music has sung Luigi Dallapiccola’s Concerto per la notte di Natale dell’anno 1956 with Zürich Opera and Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the Opera Nova Ensemble.

Source: Naxos Website
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (April 2010)

Recordings of Bach Cantatas & Other Vocal Works

Conductor

As

Works

Dwight Oltman

Soprano

BWV 212, BWV 243 [2^nd], BWV 245 [3^rd]

Links to other Sites

Margaret Chalker Biography (Naxos)

Margaret Chalker - Sopran (Opernhaus Zürich) [German]