Biography
Scottish mezzo-soprano Allison Cook made her Royal Opera debut in 2004 as Babette (Babette’s Feast) in the Linbury Studio Theatre and has since sung Kate Julien (Owen Wingrave), also in the Linbury Studio Theatre, and Blossom (Anna Nicole, world premiere) and Margret (Wozzeck) on the main stage. She returns in the 2017/18 Season to sing Prostitute (From the House of the Dead).
Cook trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the national opera studios of Paris and Strasbourg. Her early engagements included Composer (Ariadne auf Naxos) for Opéra national du Rhin, Carmen and Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus) for Glyndebourne on Tour and Valletto and La Fortuna (L’incoronazione di Poppea) with Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble at the Wiener Festwochen and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Engagements since include Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde) in Prague and Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw) for La Scala, Milan..
Contemporary opera credits include the Marquise de Merteuil (Francesconi’s Quartett) for La Scala, Strasbourg Festival, Casa de Música, Porto, Wiener Festwochen, in Paris and at the Holland Festival, Duchess (Powder Her Face) for New York City Opera, Chantal (Eötvös’s Le Balcon) in Toulouse, Amsterdam and for the Aix-en-Provence festival, the title role in Saariaho’s Emilie for Salzburg Landestheater and Madame de Warens in the world premiere of Fénélon’s JJR (Citoyen de Genève) for Geneva Opera. Her role creations include Red Queen/Queen of Hearts/Duchess/Mock Turtle (Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground) and Maria (Berkeley’s For You). She also performs widely in concert, her appearances including Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music (BBC Proms) and Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (Louvre).