Gigi Mitchell-Velasco has received praise from the critics and public alike for her interpretations of Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss. The New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini wrote that she sang with a “dark-hued sound and elegance,” and the Wall Street Journal called her “the most finished artist, sensitive to every nuance of the text.”
In 2009/10 Ms. Mitchell-Velasco sang Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with Michael Christie for the Phoenix Symphony’s opening concerts and with Jaap van Zweden and the Dallas Symphony. She sang the Verdi Requiem with the Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec, and returned to Dallas for Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky and Wolfgang Rihm’s Memoria, also led by Maestro van Zweden.
Recent highlights include Carnegie Hall appearances for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Helmuth Rilling and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Collegiate Chorale led by Robert Bass; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas; Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 “Jeremiah” with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony; Kodály’s Te Deum, the Verdi Requiem and Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony; Mahler Symphony No. 8 with Andreas Delfs at the Milwaukee Symphony; Alexander Nevsky to open the Charleston Symphony’s season; Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Phoenix Symphony and with the Minnesota Orchestra; Handel’s Judas Maccabeus for with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; Debussy’s La Damoiselle élue at Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival, et al.
Opera roles include Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde with the Florentine Opera, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier with the Minnesota Opera, Dorabella in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Suzuki in Madama Butterfly with the Toledo Opera, and Federica in Luisa Miller with Opera Boston and Washington Concert Opera, where she also sang Parseis in Massenet’s Esclarmonde.
Ms. Mitchell-Velasco recorded Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Einfache Lieder and Abschiedslieder with Caspar Richter and the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz for ASV/London, of which Eric Meyers of Opera News said, “she shares her lyric mezzo with great sensitivity and sings with complete commitment to Korngold’s highly emotional idiom.”
A protégé of Christa Ludwig, Gigi Mitchell-Velasco is a two-time winner of the Robert Lauch Memorial Grant of the New York Wagner Society and the recipient of the 1997 American Wagner Association Award at the Liederkranz Foundation Competition for Wagnerian Voice. Other awards include the 1996 First Prize and an Artist’s Grant in 2001 at the Annamaria Saritelli-di Panni Bel Canto Awards.
