Sophie Junker
soprano
After studies in her native Belgium and in London, soprano Sophie Junker burst onto the international scene in 2010 by winning the London Handel Competition, consolidating her rapid rise with victory in the 2012 Cesti Competition at the Innsbruck Early Music Festival. She now regularly performs with top-flight conductors including Richard Egarr (Drusilla/Virtu L’incoronazione di Poppea and Melanto/Fortuna Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria), Paul McCreesh (St Matthew Passion, B minor Mass, Purcell’s King Arthur) and Masaaki Suzuki (Bach cantatas, Monteverdi’s Vespers). Sophie already has an established relationship with the Opera Royal de Liège-Wallonie and Angers-Nantes Opéra. She made her American operatic début in 2016, singing Cleis in Martini’s Sapho et Hélène in Chabrier’s Une éducation manquée (Opera Lafayette, New York and Washington). Further operatic roles include Proserpine and Euridice in Charpentier’s La déscente d’Orphée aux enfers (Wigmore Hall, The Hague) and Belinda in Dido and Aeneas (Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik). On the concert platform, Sophie is a frequent soloist with Concerto Copenhagen and Lars Ulrik Mortensen, with La Nuova Musica under David Bates, and with the Belgium-based ensemble Vox Luminis. In this season, Sophie’s lithe and sparkling soprano will be heard singing First Lady in Die Zauberflöte (Christophe Rousset), Handel’s Brockes Passion (for Lars Ulrik Mortensen), Purcell’s King Arthur with Vox Luminis, and will make her role début as Zerlina in Don Giovanni in Moscow.
