The Finnish mezzo-soprano Monica Groop’s wide-ranging career is based upon repertoire of great musical adventurousness – a rich and varied mixture of baroque music, classical repertoire and modern masters. She began her professional singing career as a soloist in baroque music and oratorios, a field in which she has enjoyed long-term collaborations with leading figures such as Eric Ericson, Helmuth Rilling, Sigiswald Kuijken and Philippe Herreweghe. Her professional operatic début came in 1987, as Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther with the Finnish National Opera, and two years later her career took a major step forward as she reached the final of the Cardiff Singer of the World competition, alongside Bryn Terfel and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Monica Groop has been an international mainstay in the world’s foremost opera houses ever since her London début at Covent Garden in the highly acclaimed 1991 Wagner Ring cycle conducted by Bernard Haitink. Other eminent conductors with whom she has collaborated, on stage or in concert, include Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir Roger Norrington, Neeme Järvi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Seiji Ozawa, Zubin Mehta and Sir Georg Solti. An accomplished recitalist, Monica Groop has given solo recitals at such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and the Musikverein in Vienna. She was the first Finnish female singer to be invited to give a song recital at the Salzburg Festival, accompanied by András Schiff with whom she appears regularly. Other regular partners include the pianists Rudolf Jansen, Roger Vignoles and Ilmo Ranta. Monica Groop has recorded extensively, participating on more than sixty recordings on various labels. One of her major projects has been the present recording of the songs by Edvard Grieg, and she has also contributed together with Anne Sofie von Otter and others, to the complete Sibelius songs, included in the Sibelius Edition on BIS.
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