“… Whately’s ability to trace the drama of each song, whether in powerful climax or drawing back to a whisper, makes this an absorbing journey, with Middleton a poised and incisive co-traveller…”

The Observer (March 2023)

Kitty Whately’s Annina-as-discarded-wife relishes her role too. She’s brilliant in the Act Two waltz-finale where she reads the assignation letter to Ochs, never better pointed.

The Arts Desk (June 2021)

Kitty Whately and Nicky Spence's delightful film If you go down to the woods was originally intended as a Christmas piece, but its release (as part of Grange Park Opera's Interim Season) has been brought forward to cheer us up. Whately and Spence, accompanied by Ella O'Neill, perform an eclectic programme of songs which instead of being a recital are linked together with a delightful narrative. Narrated by Kevin Whately (Kitty's father) the film is a mock reality show Couples' Retreat, about a Geordie couple (Kitty Whately and Nicky Spence) who go camping in the woods to recapture their relationship. As might be expected, the performances are strong and vivid, projecting character and words, and moving between comedy and serious in a fluid way. It makes 40 minutes of pure delight, only Spence could sing Jeremy Nicholas' camping song with such innuendo whilst Kitty Whately was very touching as the Baker's wife in Sondheim's Into the Woods. The music featured a new arrangement of Teddy Bear's Picnic by Roderick Williams alongside songs by Dominic Argento, Jeremy Nicholas (camping song, full of innuendo), Jonathan Dove, Mervyn Horder, Teddy Bear's Picnic arr. Roderick Williams, Reynaldo Hahn, Benjamin Britten, Schumann, Sondheim, Handel/Somervell, Brahms, Faure, Humperdinck, ending with Gerswhin's Lorelei as a duet (with moves). Pure delight! [Grange Park Opera]

Planet Hugill (November 2020)

Vaughan Williams THE SONG OF LOVE CD (Albion Records 2019)

“The mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately’s memorably affecting and delectably articulate contribution is of superlative quality and also serves to remind us that the cycle’s first performance – on December 2, 1904, at London’s Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall – was given by a contralto, Edith Clegg, with Hamilton Harty on the piano. Whately also excels in the 1897 setting of The Willow Song and enchanting Three Songs from Shakespeare.”
Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone Magazine (December 2019)

‘Whately strikes a sensitive balance between the music’s musing sensuality and the waves of more intense emotion which surface in songs like ‘Lovesight’ … (she) dispatches them with unassuming freshness.’
Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine (October 2019)

“Whately’s limpid mezzo delights in The Willow Song and the settings from Measure for Measure, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Henry VIII.”
Hugh Canning, Sunday Times (18thAugust 2019)

Hermann WUTHERING HEIGHTS (Opéra National de Lorraine)

“Kitty Whately dispatched Isabell’s ditty with fine piano playing and an equally impressive mezzo”
Francis Carlin, Opera Now, July 2019

“Kitty Whately … (is) a sensitive and fervent performer, who adds much melancholy to her Act 4 aria, perhaps the most beautiful in the score.”
Michel Thomé, ResMusica, May 2019

Elgar THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS (Crouch End Festival Chorus)

“Kitty Whately’s voice is lovely – she’s a true mezzo-soprano with some powerfully sweet overtones in the upper register … her final ‘Softly and gently …’ was a model of gentle yearning, inviting the appropriate misty-eyed silence before the applause broke out.”
Barry Creasy, MusicOMH (February 2019)

Mozart COSI FAN TUTTE (Opera Holland Park)

‘Kitty Whately’s Dorabella was a strong contrast – bubbling with personality and fully mistress of both the melodramatics of “Smanie implacabili” and the insouciance of “E amore un ladroncello”.’
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph (June 2018)

‘Kitty Whately likewise proved almost infinitely capable both of sisterly affinity and dramatic disentanglement. So many attributes – sorrow and joy, honour and temptation, simplicity and complexity – were revealed as sides of the same experimental coin. Lines, unadorned or subtly ornamented, exuded both clarity and warmth.’
Mark Berry, Opera Today (June 2018)

‘As the two sisters Eleanor Dennis and Kitty Whately ideally complemented and blended with each other. […] Whately’s richly textured mezzo encompassed the playfulness and fallibility of the younger sister.’
John Johnston, Bachtrack (June 2018)

‘The sisters – Eleanor Dennis’s Fiordiligi, Kitty Whately’s Dorabella – flounce and purr as Georgian belles who could have stepped from a Gainsborough frame. […] Kitty Whately’s Dorabella finds rich hues of perplexity and darkness in the (supposedly) flightier sister’s role.’
Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk (June 2018)

‘Whately’s mezzo is more quicksilver, with its attractive vibrato and general deftness, matching her more mercurial portrayal.’
Francis Muzzo, Opera Now (July/August 2018)

Mark-Anthony Turnage – CORALINE (Royal Opera House, Barbican Theatre)

‘Kitty Whately acted it all out to perfection on stage. […] all eyes were, as they should be, on Whately, a charismatic presence as both “good” and “bad” mums.’
David Nice, The Arts Desk (5 April 2018)

‘Kitty Whately is excellent as the mother and her mirror counterpart’
Richard Fairman Financial Times (1 April 2018)

‘Kitty Whately stands out as Coraline’s real and mirror-world mother.’
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph (31 March 2018)

‘Most aptly representative of these opposing worlds is Kitty Whately as the Mother/Other Mother. Starting the opera as a patronising woman with a purposely restricted use of volume, abruptly she becomes almost unrecognisable when she embodies the deceptive Other Mother. Whately uses creepy false smiles, gradual and unexpected slow crescendos, and a jagged body language to display a bloodthirsty, unstable woman.’
Sophia Lambton, Broadway World (30 March 2018)

‘mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately is excellent in the dual role of Coraline’s mother and her increasingly psychopathic alternate version, Other Mother.’
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out (30 April 2018)

Handel – GIULIO CESARE (English Touring Opera)

‘Kitty Whately’s sparky, pugnacious Sesto was a joy throughout’
Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine (December 2017)

‘Kitty Whately is outstanding’
George Hall, The Stage (5 October 2017)

‘Kitty Whately gives impassioned accounts of Sesto’s magnificent “Cara speme” and “L’Angue offeso”.’
The Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen, (6 October 2017)

‘Whately admirably conveys the vulnerability that lurks behind Sesto’s bravado.’
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, (9 October 2017)

Albert Herring, The Grange Festival

“the young leads were even better. I’ve rarely seen a more convincing ‘romantic’ pair than Kitty Whately’s succulently sung Nancy and Timonthy Nelson’s Hunky Sid. There was an erotic charge in their every encounter”
Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine, (August 2017)

Kitty Whately & Joseph Middleton (Wigmore Hall)

“Two years on [from my last review] the timbre is just as lustrous, but stronger and more uniform. In a programme comprising English 20th-century songs (apart from one Poulenc ditty and an early Stanford), she brought a beautifully warm legato to such cherished miniatures as Vaughan Williams’s Silent Noon, Warlock’s My Own Country and Ivor Gurney’s Down By the Salley Gardens… Whately was mesmerising here.”
Richard Morrison, Financial Times (Apr 2017)

“This was a chance to experience again Kitty Whately’s winning combination of rich, even tone, superb diction and feel for the words. Each song was projected with a feeling of character and clear sense of the emotional narrative, with pianist Joseph Middleton forming a strongly characterful partner”
Planet Hugill (Apr 2017)

Mendelssohn COMPLETE SONGS, VOL. 2 (Champs Hill Records)

“The most palpable sense of delight rises from the voice of Kitty Whately whose feisty mezzo is entrusted with three impassioned songs by Mendelssohn’s sister, Fanny.”
Hilary Finch, BBC Music Magazine (October 2016)