Kitty Whately is one of the UK’s most characterful mezzo sopranos of the operatic stage and concert platform, and a highly acclaimed interpreter particularly of contemporary opera and art song. She has performed leading roles in world and UK premieres of opera by Mark Anthony Turnage, Missy Mazzoli, Mark Adamo and Vasco Mandonça, alongside song cycles written especially for her by Jonathan Dove, Sally Beamish, Steven Hough, Juliana Hall and Tarik O’Regan. She has received critical acclaim for performances of opera by Benjamin Britten and Bernard Hermann, as well as a huge variety of roles from the core canon of classical opera.
Recent and future opera engagements include Michelle Festen (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Poppea L'Incoronazione di Poppea (The Grange Festival), Suzuki Madama Butterfly (Grange Park Opera), Jocasta Oedipus Rex (Scottish Opera) and Lyel The Snow Maiden (ETO).
Other recent highlights include Isabelle in Missy Mazzoli’s one-woman opera Song from the Uproar with BBCSO and BBC Singers at The Barbican, Dorabella Cosi fan Tutte (The Grange Festival), Hermia in the Robert Carson production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Opéra de Rouen), Pallas The Judgement of Paris (Cambridge Baroque Opera), Hansel Hansel and Gretel and Donna Elvira Don Giovanni (Scottish Opera). In recent years she has also played Meg in Opera Holland Park’s UK premiere of Little Women by Mark Adamo, Kate Owen Wingrave (Opera National de Lorraine and Grange Park Opera), Annina Der Rosenkavalier (Garsington Opera), and Dog / Forester's Wife / Woodpecker / Owl The Cunning Little Vixen with the CBSO in Birmingham, Paris, Hamburg and Dortmund. Kitty created the role of Mother/Other Mother in the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Coraline (Barbican produced by the Royal Opera House)
Further operatic engagements include Isabella in Bernard Herman’s Wuthering Heights (Opera National de Lorraine), Paquette Candide (Bergen National Opera and The Grange Festival), the world premiere of Vasco Mendonça’s The House Taken Over directed by Katie Mitchell (Aix-en-Provence, Antwerp, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Bruges and Lisbon), Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Stewardess Flight (Opera Holland Park), Nancy Albert Herring (The Grange Festival), Hermia (Bergen and on tour with Aix-en-Provence Festival in Beijing); Ippolita / Pallade in Cavalli’s Elena (Montpellier and Versailles, Aix-en-Provence Festival), and Sesto Giulio Cesare (ETO).
As a past winner of the Kathleen Ferrier award, and former BBC New Generation Artist, Kitty is in high demand as a recitalist and concert artist. She has sung with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and her frequent performances with the BBC orchestras include De Falla’s The Three Cornered Hat (BBC National Orchestra of Wales), her BBC Proms debut in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Suite from Act II of Caroline Mathilde, as well as recordings of Ravel’s Sheherezade with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with John Wilson and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter with BBC Concert Orchestra. Recent concert performances have included Mahler Das Lied von der Erde at the Mizmorim Festival in Basel, The Dream of Gerontius with Crouch End Festival Chorus at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with the orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Mahler’s 8th Symphony with the Symphony Orchestra of Chetham’s School of Music.
Kitty is a passionate champion of women composers, and her album Befreit: A Soul Surrendered, with Joseph Middleton, included world premiere recordings of songs by Johanna Müller-Hermann and Margarete Schweikert. In 2025 she will release a complete vocal works of the Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke with Anna Tilbrook and Nicholas Phan for Signum Records including newly published songs and duets, as well as a new album of French song with Edwige Herchenroder to include world premiere recordings of songs by Hedwige Chrétien and Marguerite Canal on the Chandos label. She also looks forward to recording Vaughan Williams and his women contemporaries and influencees with William Vann for Albion records, and Madeleine Dring songs with Julius Drake for Chandos records.
Kitty is the co-founder of the charity SWAP’ra (Supporting Women And Parents in Opera).
With her accomplished mezzo-soprano, Kitty Whately is a class act as Lel as she suggests a man who not only possesses great charm, but who relishes the fact as he delivers his songs.
Music OMH (October 2024)
Standouts include... Whately’s vividly sung live wire, Lel
The Stage (October 2024)
However, it was Whately’s Lel who captured musical hearts, just as she/he cheekily seduces the village girls with songs. Charm, confidence and purity of tone made this a performance to light up the darkest autumn evening.
The Arts Desk (October 2024)
The drama comes to life when Lel, the lad whom the snowmaiden has her eye on, instead chooses the peasant girl Kupava as his bride — and those roles are sung with personality and vigour by Kitty Whately and Katherine McIndoe.
Times (October 2024)
Kitty Whately in the trouser role of Lel was suitably gamine. She has three important songs during the course of the opera: these account for her instant appeal to Snegurotchka and the other village girls, delivered here with much lyrical intensity.
Opera Today (October 2024)
Kitty Whately gave a haunting performance as Jocasta, her richly hued mezzo giving gravitas to the queen’s realisation of the tragedy unfolding before her.
The Arts Desk (August 2024)
Kitty Whately was a formidable Jocasta, really owning the role, cheered loudly from her plinth as she joined the drama, a huge high point so impressive they did it twice.
Bach Track (August 2024)
Successfully hoicking her plush alto into soprano territory, Kitty Whately sings a radiant Poppea – more easygoing and less purely manipulative than some.
Guardian (June 2024)
...an exquisite vein of singing, matched by the consistently good Kitty Whately.
Times (June 2024)
As Poppea herself, Kitty Whately was a beautifully strong presence
The Article (June 2024)
As a mezzo-soprano, Kitty Whately also brought a refocusing to Poppea. The role lay easily in her vocal compass but the voice's centre of gravity and Whately's demeanour gave Poppea a greater sense of balance and experience. She was still very sexy, but less the perky soubrette, creating something more languorous. This Poppea felt less like a gold digger and the creamy luxury of Whately's voice made Poppea sound well upholstered. The duets with Sam Furness' Nerone really did tingle, and that they stripped down and got into bed during the final duet felt inevitable.
Planet Hugill (June 2024)
Kitty Whately made a memorable protagonist, her spotless mezzo-soprano and crisp diction bringing clarity to an elusive staging
The Guardian (February 2024)
Whately’s yielding to Lester’s Guglielmo has a self-assured frankness that echoes Mozart’s genuine eroticism at this point...
Musically, much of it is superb. Clarke, with her silvery tone, is ravishing in her arias and her voice blends wonderfully well with Whately’s in their duets. The latter brings real emotional fire to È Amore un Ladroncello and that duet with Lester.
The Guardian (June 2023)
Kitty Whately, also Holland Park’s Dorabella, proved every inch – note? – her equal, yet properly different in character. Their collaborative chemistry was notable...
Opera Today (June 2023)
Though Ferrando and Guglielmo (Nicholas Lester) are blessed with the perfect appearance for a comedy duo, the girls are funnier: one of the great pleasures of the evening is enjoying the interaction between Fiordiligi and Dorabella (Kitty Whately)
Seen and Heard (June 2023)
Samantha Clarke and Kitty Whately made a delightful and highly believable pair of sisters. Much of the joy of this performance came from Clarke and Whately's interactions, the way they told the story via little looks and telling intimate detail.
Kitty Whately is an experienced Dorabella (we caught her in the role at Opera Holland Park in 2018, with Nicholas Lester as Guglielmo, see my review) but there was nothing routine about her performance. There was a wonderful freshness about how Whately drew Dorabella's volatility, which came over in her two arias. Yet, there was no easy depiction of Dorabella as the lively one and Fiordiligi as the serious one, here the two sisters played off each other delightfully. And you sensed that this Dorabella really fell for the disguised Guglielmo, their duet in the second scene of Act Two was touching and at the end Whately's Dorabella was bewildered and angry.
Planet Hugill (June 2023)
“… 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)
Impeccable, le quatuor d’amoureux, d’aisance scénique et de probité vocale, de Kitty Whately (Hermia), mezzo au timbre fruité
Impeccable, the quartet of lovers, with scenic ease and vocal probity, from Kitty Whately (Hermia), mezzo with a fruity timbre
Première Loge (January 2023)
...les deux rivales bien caractérisées par Kitty Whately et Nardus Williams
,,,the two rivals well characterized by Kitty Whately and Nardus Williams
Concert Classical (January 2023)
Kitty Whately stood out amongst the rest of a solid cast as a feisty, vivid Meg.
BachTrack (July 2022)
Whately brought a lovely warmth to Meg, as well as giving the girl a feeling of the strong character that lay underneath.
The cast all brought an appealing directness to the performance, we were really rooting not just for the sisters but the whole family. The ending, with its magical quartet was beautifully done and in Badham, Whately, Eyley and Karani, Marchment had a finely balanced quartet of sisters, each a character yet combining into a single entity at times.
Planet Hugill (July 2022)
Kitty Whately gave Meg, the first sister to get away in marriage, plenty of resolution and humour.
Opera Magazine (September 2022)
If Wood impresses greatly, so, too, do the three female leads: Hye-Youn Lee (Donna Anna), Kitty Whately (Donna Elvira) and Lea Shaw (Zerlina).
Telegraph (May 2022)
The female protagonists are a matching tour de force........ while Kitty Whately, as the discarded Donna Elvira, echoes her predicament with an endless, captivating range of vocal expression.
The Scotsman (May 2022)
Then there is Donna Elvira. Kitty Whately is superb, ranging through the emotions and keeping the audience in doubt as to what they really are.
The Opera Critic (June 2022)
On stage, the wome women excelled. Kitty Whately sailed through 'Mi tradi' with elegance and fluency
Opera (July 2022)
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)
Kitty Whately’s tomboy Hansel is well contrasted, vocally as well as physically. Gretel plays with her toys while Hansel bounds around with a broom, and Whately’s vocal energy is apparent even when she is in the witch’s cage.
Bachtrack (February 2021)
...energised performances from Kitty Whately as Hansel and Rhian Lois as Gretel – all polished singing and rough-and-tumble action – and some clever details propel it along very enjoyably.
The Independent (iNews) (February 2021)
Kitty Whately alternates tenderness and cold manipulation as Kate and is in silky voice throughout.
Opera Wire (December 2020)
Kitty Whately is fittingly unsympathetic as Kate. Her mezzo-soprano is powerful and domineering, but always expressive, and her final duet with Owen creates terrific dramatic tension as he asks her to leave Paramore and share a new life with him.
Opera Today (December 2020)
A top-flight cast is led by Ross Ramgobin in the title role and Kitty Whately, heart-wrenching as Kate. Gripping, taxing, rewarding.
The Guardian (December 2020)
Taylor and Whately's duet at the end of Act One 'Son nata a lagrimar' was rightly one of the highlights, with the two singers complementing each other well and knowing when to hold back.
As Sesto (a role which she sang in the original 2017 production), Kitty Whately beautifully calibrated the young man's journey from naivety and youth to the experience of killing his father's killer (Tolomeo). She made Sesto's series of outbursts work in terms of the emotional journey that he goes on, as well as giving us some very fine Handel singing. It is a testament to Whately talent that rather than getting annoyed with the spoiled brat (which can happen), we sympathised with his trauma and went on a journey too.
Planet Hugill (March 2020)
As the tortured Sesto, mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately sang with poised musicality, with “Cara speme” a particular highlight.
Bachtrack (March 2020)
Cordelia and Sesto, magnificently sung by mezzos Ann Taylor and Kitty Whately
The Observer (March 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)
Dream of Gerontius - Hertfordshire Chorus - St Albans Cathedral
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Madama Butterfly - Grange Park Opera
Stanford: Children’s Songs - Somm
The Complete Songs of Fauré, Vol.4
Signum Records (2021)
Mendelssohn COMPLETE SONGS, VOL. 2 Champs Hill
Vaughan Williams THE SONG OF LOVE
Previously unrecorded works by Ralph Vaughan Williams with Kitty Whately (mezzo), Roderick Williams (baritone) and William Vann (piano). Albion Records (2019)
Jonathan Dove NIGHTS NOT SPENT ALONE
The complete works for mezzo-soprano by Jonathan Dove with Kitty Whately (mezzo) and Simon Lepper (piano) Champs Hill Records (2017)
The Harmonius Echo- Chandos
THIS OTHER EDEN
landscape of english poetry & song with Kitty Whately (mezzo soprano), Joseph Middleton (piano ) and the Navarra Quartet CHAMPS HILL RECORDS (2015)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 5
Hyperion Records (2020)
Mendelssohn COMPLETE SONGS, VOL. 2
Malcolm Martineau (piano) with a line-up of singers including Kitty Whately, (mezzo), Paula Murrihy (mezzo), Sophie Bevan (soprano) and Benjamin Appl (baritone) Champs Hill Records (2016)
Sullivan, A: The Light of the World
Dutton Epoch Records - (Nov 2018)
Vaughan Williams London Symphony
Martyn Brabbins conducts Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony.
HMS Pinafore- Linn
