Olivia Vermeulen Mezzo-soprano

Biography

Olivia Vermeulen was born in the Netherlands and is as well-versed in the classical and baroque repertoires as she is in contemporary music. After studying in Detmold and Berlin, she participated in the masterclasses of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Andreas Scholl, Thomas Quasthoff and Irwin Gage. In 2008, she won the Radio Bavaria “La Voce” competition. In 2018, she made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor under the baton of Daniel Harding and she took part in a European tour by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra (Cherubino in Le Nozze di de Figaro under the direction of René Jacobs). Extremely active in the domain of contemporary music, she was the first to perform songs by Wolfgang Rihm and she appeared in the world premieres of Thomas Larcher’s Das Jagdgewehr at the 2018 Bregenz Festival and Philippe Manoury’s Kein Licht at the 2017 Ruhrtriennale. She recently sang Ramiro in La Finta Giardiniera with the Radio Munich Orchestra and the title roles in Handel’s Teseo at the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and Vivaldi’s Arsilda at Luxembourg’s Grand Théâtre, the Lille Opera and the Opéra Royal in Versailles. Her other roles include Fiodor in Boris Godunov at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Annio in La Clemenza di Tito in Moscow and Cherubino at the Dijon Opera.
Olivia Vermeulen performs regularly under the baton of numerous conductors including Philippe Herreweghe, Pablo Heras-Casado, Marek Janowski, Michael Schønwandt, Lothar Zagrosek, Andrea Marcon, Giovanni Antonini, Iván Fischer, Markus Stenz, Frans Brüggen, Reinhard Goebel, Alessandro de Marchi, Tomáš Netopil, and Paul McCreesh. She also sings with prestigious musical ensembles including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Modern Ensemble, and the Salzburg Camerata. She also has made guest appearances at many of the great festivals (Aix-en-Provence, the Ruhrtriennale, the Beaune Festival, the Munich Festival, the Berlin Musikfest, the Kissinger Sommer, the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Salzburg Mozartwoche). She recently recorded Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (Masaaki Suzuki, Bach Collegium Japan) and Handel’s Didone abbandonata (Harmonia Mundi / Sony).