Strauss’s ‘Four Last Songs’ with Elizabeth Watts
Saturday 14 June 2025
7.30pm
Clifton Cathedral
Tickets: £19.62
Including Bristol Beacon booking fee
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A powerful festival finale featuring the acclaimed soprano Elizabeth Watts, whose voice was hailed by International Record Review as “one of the most beautiful Britain has produced in a generation.” She performs Strauss’s Four Last Songs – a profoundly moving farewell to life, written in the shadow of mortality and widely regarded as a pinnacle of 20th-century orchestral song.
Showcasing Bristol Metropolitan Orchestra, this evocative programme also includes the melancholic and introspective Symphony No. 3 by Brahms, Ravel’s exquisite Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Wagner’s bold Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – a sweeping journey through late Romanticism.
Elizabeth Watts – Soprano
Bristol Metropolitan Orchestra
Tim Harrison – Conductor
Artist change: Elizabeth Watts replaces Rowan Pierce, who is no longer able to perform in this event.
Programme includes
Richard Wagner Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Maurice Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte
Richard Strauss Four Last Songs
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 3
About Elizabeth Watts
Elizabeth Watts was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral and studied archaeology at Sheffield University before studying singing at the Royal College of Music in London. She was awarded an Hon DMus from Sheffield in 2013 and became a Fellow of the RCM in 2017. She is a prolific recording artist, and her recordings include critically acclaimed discs of Lieder by Schubert and Strauss, Mozart arias with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Handel Brockes Passion with the Academy of Ancient Music.
Highlights this season include Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Andrès Orozco Estrada and Symphony No. 4 with Jun Märkl in the Hague; exploring Mozart and Beethoven with Philharmonie Zuidnederland and Richard Egarr and singing Britten War Requiem and the Bach St Matthew Passion with the Bach Choir, a piece she recently performed at the 2024 Edinburgh International Festival with Ryan Wigglesworth.
Opera is also an important part of her career, with roles including Countess Le nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira Don Giovanni and Fiordiligi Così fan tutte for Welsh National Opera; Marzelline Fidelio for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Countess Le nozze di Figaro for English National Opera and most recently Aspasia in Mitridate at Garsington Opera which prompted Alexandra Coghlan to write in The i “Elizabeth Watts is an immaculate Aspasia, stopping time in Act III’s ravishing “Pallid ombre”.
Other past highlights reflect her wide repertoire and include singing Strauss and Mahler with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko; Ligeti Le Grand Macabre and Britten Spring Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle; Rossini Petite messe solennelle with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno; Gluck Iphigénie en Tauride with Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España with Nathalie Stutzmann and Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Sakari Oramo.
Elizabeth’s many appearances at the BBC Proms include Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo; Ravel L’enfant et les sortilèges with the LSO and Simon Rattle; Schubert songs with the BBC Philharmonic and John Storgårds and Beethoven arias with the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrew Manze.
Elizabeth won the 2007 Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition as well as the 2006 Kathleen Ferrier Award. She is a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and was awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in February 2011
