Nuria Rial

The soprano Nuria Rial, who was born in Manresa in Catalonia, initially studied voice and piano at the Conservatory of Barcelona; after earning a double degree, she continued her training from 1998 to 2002 in Kurt Widmer’s concert class at the Basel Academy of Music. In 2003 she won the Helvetia Patria Jeunesse Foundation Prize in Lucerne. Baroque music is the focus of her repertoire, but Rial is also a successful Mozart performer and lieder singer. She has performed in concert with such ensembles as Il Giardino Armonico, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Concerto Köln, The English Concert, L’Arpeggiata, Il Pomo d’Oro, and Café Zimmermann and has worked with conductors like Laurence Cummings, Teodor Currentzis, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Paul Goodwin, Thomas Hengelbrock, Gustav Leonhardt, and Trevor Pinnock. In addition to her concert activities, Nuria Rial also appears in selected opera engagements. She has performed in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the Staatsoper Berlin and in Cavalli’s Eliogabalo at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, both times under the direction of René Jacobs. At the Teatro Real in Madrid she participated in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, in the staging by Peter Sellars, and Iván Fischer engaged her as Pamina for a performance series of Mozart’s The Magic Flute with his Budapest Festival Orchestra. Nuria Rial has won the Echo Klassik Award four times: in 2009, when she was named Young Female Singer of the Year for her recording of Haydn arias; in 2009 and 2010 for the projects Teatro d’amore and Via crucis, which she recorded with Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata; and in 2012 for her Telemann album with the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Her CD Ave Maria won Holland’s Edison Award.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 31 August 2010, together with Philippe Jaroussky and L'Arpeggiata, under the direction of Christina Pluhar.

February 2017