Alexandra Flood – Grange Festival Song Prize Winner

Australian coloratura soprano, Alexandra Flood, won the Wellhayes Recital Prize, which we sponsored as part of the Grange Festival International Singing Competition in October 2019 and we are delighted to welcome her and her accompanist Giulio Ferré to Wellhayes in 2022 after two abortive attempts in 2020 and 2021. The programme will be:

Rachmaninov – 6 Romances

Rachmaninov – Vocalise

Hugo Wolf – Selctions from Italienisches Liederbuch

Grieg – En drøm

Britten – Down by the Salley Gardens

Grainger – The Spring of Thyme

Alexandra Flood made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2014 and has since enjoyed a blossoming career on the opera and concert stages. Her roles include Blonde/Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Clorinda/La Cenerentola, Violetta/Traviata Remixed, Serpetta/La finta Giardiniera, Maria/West Side Story, Valencienne/Die lustige Witwe, Jemmy/Guillaume Tell, Musetta/La bohème, Porporina/L’opera seria, Norina/Don Pasquale, Gretel/Hänsel und Gretel, and most recently a leading role in the world premiere of Vrouwenstemmen in Amsterdam. In 2019 Alexandra appeared in recital with Alex Raineri at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and made her recital debut at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

Despite many COVID cancellations, 2020 was a busy one for Alexandra, including an operetta gala concert with the Orchestra Filhamonica Italian in Bern, Switzerland and a debut performance of Soprano 1 in Mozart’s C minor Mass with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra. Alexandra completed Exzellenzlabor Gesang with Hedwig Fassbender in August before appearing in recital with Moritz Eggert in Munich. Alexandra then competed in the International Debut Singing Competition where she was a Lied finalist and nominated for best interpretation of an English/German Lied. Alexandra made her debut as Nannetta in Falstaff with Malmö Opera in November 2020.

In 2021 Alexandra performed one of the 9 female solo voices in the Procession of Saint-Jacques in M-A. Dalbavie’s contemporary opera Le Soulier de satin at the Opéra Nationale de Paris and appeared as Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia in a new production for the Opéra de Paris Académie. In the summer, she appeared in concert with Maestro Thomas Hengelbrock and the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble at Festival d’Aix en Provence. In Australia, she gave a national recital tour, appearing with Opera Queensland, the National Opera in Canberra, at the Melbourne Recital Centre and with Southern Cross Soloists at QPAC in Brisbane. In December she made her debut with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra as first soprano in Mozart’s Davide Penitente.

German-Italian pianist Giulio Ferré was born in Munich in 1994. He began piano lessons with Martina Bauer at the age of 7 and organ lessons at the age of 12. In 2012 he completed a degree in Church Music in Munich, where he studied with Professor Harald Feller. In 2014 he began his studies in Freiburg, where he gained a Bachelor in Piano Performance with Tomoko Ogasawara and Professor Eric Le Sage, followed by a Masters of Art Song (Liedgestaltung) in the class of Professor Matthias Alteheld. In Freiburg, he performed the Wolf’s entire Italienisches Lieberbuch at the Meckelhalle. In October 2020 he commenced a second masters degree in Opera Coaching / Collaborative Piano under the tutelage of Professor Bernhard Epstein at the University of Performing Arts in Stuttgart and performed a recital at the Stuttgart Italian Cultural Institute. Other appearances include in the Petite Messe Solennelle with the Heilig-Geist-Ensemble in Günzburg. Giulio has participated in masterclasses with Karl-Peter Kammerlander and Severin von Eckardstein among others. In 2020 he was engaged as a pianist at the Exzellenz-Labor Gesang (now Exzellenz-Labor Oper) with Professor Hedwig Fassbender in Weikersheim, where he gained his greatest musical inspirations. Giulio was recently awarded the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now scholarship. He regularly appears in concert and recital alongside various artistic collaborators and works as a répétiteur.

Listen to Alexandra singing Strauss: