BMus(Hons); A.Mus.A
At St Margaret’s 1989-1993
Kristy Swift is an internationally acclaimed soprano. After attending St Margaret’s on an academic scholarship and graduating in 1993, Kristy studied singing at The University of Queensland and was valedictorian of her year. She continued her voice training at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
Now based in London, Kristy finished the 2018/19 season at the Buxton Festival, as Venus in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. Other recent roles include Violetta in La Traviata, Tatiana in Eugene Onegin (Opera South East), and Naiad in Ariadne auf Naxos (Opera Project). Kristy has also completed two seasons as the featured soloist for the Johann Strauss Gala with Raymond Gubbay, performing in all the major concert halls of the UK and Turkey.
She has sung the role of First Sprite/cover Noémie in Cendrillon for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where she also covered the title role in Luigi Rossi's Orpheus, as well as Xenia in Boris Godounov, Second Nymph in Rusalka, First Innocent in The Minotaur and Dew Fairy/Sandman in Hansel and Gretel.
Additional roles for other companies include Marzelline in Leonore (the initial version of Fidelio) (Buxton Festival), Paquette in Candide (Barbican Centre, London, and Leipzig Gewandhaus), Young Heidi in Follies (Opéra de Toulon), Atalanta in Xerxes (Iford Festival), Mag in Winners (Wexford Festival), Yum-Yum in The Mikado (Opera Queensland), Despina in Così fan tutte (Opera Lyrica and Opera on the Move, UK), Angelica in Orlando and Norina in Don Pasquale (Melbourne Lyric Opera).
She also has extensive experience on the concert platform, with repertoire including the soprano solos in Beethoven's Mass in C, Orff's Carmina Burana, Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, Haydn's Creation and Nelson Mass, Mozart's Requiem and Mass in C Minor, K. 427, and bothGounod and Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle.
Kristy is interested in performing new work and received rave reviews in the international press for her performances as Mag in Richard Wargo’s Winners (Wexford Festival) and Elana in Llywelyn ap Myrddin’s The Crocodile (Tête à Tête).
She is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including Australia’s largest and most prestigious award for opera singers, the Herald Sun Aria (2006). She also won the National Oratorio Award in Canberra (2008) and the Robert Salzer scholarship at the Australian National Liederfest (2004).
Her voice is heard in the Hollywood remake of The Magnificent Seven (Sony Pictures, 2016) and also in the British film, Over the Edge, starring Fenella Fielding, which was released in 2010.
Kristy remembers being quite over-excitable at St Margaret’s, and is grateful to several of her mentors there for helping channel her energy into something theatrical! She is indebted to Betty Beath, for discovering and nurturing her voice, and to her language teachers- particularly Steven Rowe and Diana Marshall- for cementing the fundamental skills needed in a multilingual work environment such as opera.
