Elizabeth Watts was selected by YCAT in 2004, won the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Prize, the 2007 Outstanding Young Artist Award at the Cannes “MIDEM Classique Awards” and gained international recognition at the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, winning the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize and selection for BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists Scheme. With a voice described by International Record Review as “one of the most beautiful Britain has produced in a generation” the critical success of her first recording of Schubert Lieder has now established her as “one of the brightest new talents” (The Independent). The recording was Gramophone magazine’s “Editor’s Choice” in February 2009. Elizabeth now records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi.

Her operatic work has included: Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro) for Santa Fe Opera and Welsh National Opera, Flora (The Knot Garden) for Music Theatre Wales and the Royal Opera House, Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), Barbarina (Marriage of Figaro), Purcell’s King Arthur, and Music and Hope (Orfeo) for English National Opera (Young Singers’ Programme 2005-2007), the title role in Handel’s Semele, and Arthébuze/Actéo. Roles whilst at the RCM included Flora (Turn of the Screw), Poppea (Agrippina), and Elmira (Sosarme).

She has given recitals at leading venues throughout the UK with pianists such as Roger Vignoles and Julius Drake. She has performed in concert with all the BBC orchestras, The English Concert, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé, and with Manchester Camerata at the 2009 BBC Proms. She has received glowing praise for her performance as Mandane at the Linbury Studio for the Royal Opera House production of Thomas Arne’s Artaxerxes, and she will reprise this role at the 2010 Buxton Festival.

Highlights of the 2009/10 season include Brahms’s Requiem with Northern Sinfonia and Mozart Requiem with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, and Marzelline in a production of Fidelio at the Royal Opera House.