Claudia Huckle

British contralto Claudia Huckle was trained partly in the U.S. and has also been active in Germany. Huckle was born in Britain. Between 2000 and 2004, she was active as a street musician in various European capitals. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London as a Foundation Scholar, earning an education diploma in 2003. Huckle went on to the New England Conservatory of Music, earning an undergraduate music degree in 2005, and then moved to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia for a professional studies certificate in opera the following year. In 2004, she was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and she won several other singing prizes in the U.S. and Britain. From 2006 to 2008, Huckle was part of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera. After making her debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as the Forester's Wife in Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, she appeared in various Washington National Opera productions. In 2009, Huckle joined the cast of the Leipzig Opera and remained there for four seasons. The 2013 Birgit Nilsson Remembrance Award at Plácido Domingo's Operalia competition helped Huckle's growing career along; she was the first female and the first British recipient. Huckle has appeared at major houses in Britain, the U.S., and continental Europe, including La Scala in Milan (as Die allwissende Muschel in Richard Strauss' Die Ägyptische Helena), the Zurich Opera, and the Opéra National de Paris in several Wagner roles. She is in demand as a concert singer, having appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, and Mahler's Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand"), as well as on tour with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Mozart's Requiem, K. 626; her many other appearances include one in the Schubert Mass in A flat and the Beethoven Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, with Kent Nagano and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. After appearances on several opera recordings, Huckle made her debut as a featured artist in 2023, joining tenor Nicky Spence and pianist Justin Brown on the Champs Hill label for a recording of Mahler's original piano score of the orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde.
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