Creative Team
Anna-Luise Wagner
Anna is a German soprano and linguist based in London. She holds a PhD from the Italian Department of the University of Cambridge. Her research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, explored the life of seventeenth-century writer, opera singer, and courtesan Margherita Costa (c. 1600–after 1657), who forged a career on the glittering stages of baroque Europe and became the most published and diverse woman writer of her generation. Anna is passionate about bringing together research and performance: alongside her PhD, she organised several conferences, public concerts, workshops, and lectures. These events brought to life rarely performed repertoire, especially by female composers, and explored diverse topics such as the intersections between seventeenth-century music and theatre, the parallels between music and translation, or the influence of Italian Renaissance literature on five hundred years of opera. Anna also worked as dramaturg and translator on high-profile opera productions in Germany, Austria, Italy, and the US, including the world premiere of Liszt’s incomplete opera Sardanapalo in 2018 and Barrie Kosky’s staging of Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers at the Salzburg Opera Festival 2019.
As a soprano with a ‘warm and generous’ voice (Opera Magazine), Anna’s repertoire ranges from early baroque opera to contemporary pieces. Onstage highlights include title role/Partenope (Festivals Malta and Hampstead Garden Opera) conducted by Antonio Florio at the historic Teatru Manoel for the The Three Palaces Early Opera & Music Festival in Valletta; title role/Agrippina, Belinda/Dido and Aeneas, Susanna/Le nozze di Figaro, and Dema/L’Egisto with Hampstead Garden Opera; Dorine/Céphale et Procris by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Amore and Damigella/L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Fatime/Les Indes galantes with Ensemble OrQuesta, where she has recently been made a company member; Clorinda/La Cenerentola (Random Opera); The Artist/hunger by Joanna Ward (Edinburgh Festival Fringe); as well as several roles with Cambridge University Opera including Cleopatra/Giulio Cesare, Micaëla/Carmen, Adina/L’elisir d’amore, title role/Sāvitri, and Despina/Così fan tutte.
As a concert soloist, Anna’s performances include Händel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Great Mass in C minor and Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms’s Liebeslieder and Neue Liebeslieder, Fauré’s Requiem, and Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Anna is also keen recitalist and has created the title role of Green Opera’s Fillu, a Lieder-opera telling the love story of Eugenie Schumann, daughter of Clara and Robert, and the Austrian soprano Marie Fillunger.
Chloë Allison
Chloë has a PhD from the Music Faculty of the University of Cambridge. Her work on medieval polyphony was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and she was a Cambridge Trust Scholar. Singing has been vital to the course of Chloë’s research. Immersing herself in the sound and physicality of the music has given her insights into the processes by which it was created that she simply could not have got by just reading it. She also believes in the vital role played by live performance in bringing research to new audiences. She has curated and directed a number of concerts of medieval music and has sung herself for a number of prestigious lectures, including those given by leading researchers in the field of medieval studies, Professors Susan Rankin and Emma Dillon.
As a performer, she was a 2019/20 Making Music Selected Artist with her pianist duet partner Adam McDonagh and a finalist in the London Song Festival British Art Song Competition in 2019. She has performed as a soloist with a number of Cambridge Orchestras, most recently singing Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with the University Symphony Orchestra as winner of their Concerto Competition. Her onstage appearances include the title roles in La Cenerentola and Carmen with the Cambridge University Opera, as well as La Zia Principessa/Suor Angelica, Ottavia/L’incoronazione di Poppea, Testo/Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, Maurya/Riders to the Sea, Lucretia/The Rape of Lucretia, Baba the Turk/The Rake’s Progress, and The Grand Duchess/A Dinner Engagement.
Most recently, she has sung for the premiere of Green Opera’s Lieder-opera Fillu. It tells the story of Eugenie Schumann, the youngest daughter of Clara and Robert, and her lover, the Austrian soprano Marie Fillunger, through a dramatised performance of nineteenth-century Lied and readings of their letters. The project aims to champion a diversity in love so rarely seen on the operatic stage.