Kathryn Wright
Vocal Coach - Opera
Teaching Philosophy
A good coach is a facilitator, someone who helps a singer find their way to their best version of an aria or a role. Every singer is unique, every voice has it’s own fingerprint, and I try to guide a singer to an interpretation that brings out that uniqueness and lets them put a personal stamp on the music, so they can stand out as they should. As a coach I work a lot with the language as well as the music, since that’s where the composer started, and because if you’re not in control of the words and the sounds that make up the words, you won’t sing your best. Also, it’s been proven to me over and over that if you shape the phrases right and understand the music correctly you’ll also sing better and more easily. But in the end, I believe that every singer’s job, no matter on what level, is to take that hard won technique and all that talent and put it in the service of the music and the drama. My job is to help you get there.
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Kathryn Wright is an American coach/prompter. For the past 20 years she lived and worked primarily in Germany until joining the faculty of the Hugh Hogdson School of Music’s Opera Program in 2011.
After training at McGill University in Montreal and finishing her studies at Columbia University in New York she became apprentice and assistant to Ms. Joan Dornemann, who taught her many of the subtleties of working with singers and a great deal about the operatic repertoire.
Ms. Wright freelanced extensively in New York and worked with various regional theaters in the US until she moved to Germany in 1987. Her credentials include four years at the Oper der Stadt Köln under James Conlon, two years at the Semper Oper in Dresden under Giuseppe Sinopoli, and four years as a guest artist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, working with conductors such as Peter Schneider, Adam Fisher, Carlo Rizzi, Placido Domingo and James Levine, as well as artists such as Deborah Voigt, Jennifer Larmore, Roberto Alagna, Bryn Terfel, and Ben Heppner among many others.
From 1996 to 2003 she was also a guest in Sydney for the Winter Season of the Australian Opera, where she prepared, assisted and prompted for many individual productions as well as coaching for their Young Artists Program.
She was on the musical staff of the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 2001 to 2011, where again she was privileged to collaborate with many of the well-known singers and conductors of our time, including Christian Thielemann and, most recently, Donald Runnicles.