Chinese-American soprano Georgia Duan is a rising talent in the San Francisco Bay Area with a keen interest in the Italian and Austrian operatic styles. She makes her debut this year as Mabel (Pirates of Penzance) with Pacific Repertory Opera.
Georgia has performed roles in the traditional operatic vein, including Miss Silberklang (Der Schauspieldirektor), Gretel (Hänsel and Gretel) and Bastienne (Bastien and Bastienne). Yet she also enjoys twentieth-century American opera and has sung John Duke’s Pernille/Captain Lovelock (Captain Lovelock) and Paul Siskind’s Nora (The Sailor-Boy and the Falcon). She sang Orff’s Carmina Burana at venues such as the Beijing Opera House with choirs from Stanford University on tour in honor of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. While at Stanford, Georgia performed before an audience of over 2,000 spectators at Frost Amphitheater during a simulcast of Rigoletto from the San Francisco Opera.
During a year abroad in Italy, Georgia studied with conductor Paolo Vaglieri in Milan with scholarships from Santa Clara County, Il Cenacolo, IES and Stanford University. She also worked with conductor Giovanni Fornasieri, Ricordi editor Maurizio Carnelli, and Simone Fontanelli of the Salzburg Mozarteum as a student at the Accademia Internazionale della Musica. To pursue her passion for languages, Georgia also studied German for a summer at the ActiLingua Academy in Vienna.
Georgia is equally at home in concert and oratorio repertoire. She has sung as a soloist with choruses and ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area, in works both sacred and profane: in Haydn’s Schöpfungsmesse; the American premiere of Giancarlo Aquilanti’s chamber reduction of the Prima Missa: A Celebration of Life; Strauss' Deutsche Motette with the Grammy-nominated Pacific Mozart Ensemble; Rutter's Requiem; Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 under the baton of Jindong Cai; Haydn's Missa brevis St. Johannis de Deo; Bach's St. John Passion; Mozart's Requiem; the American premiere of Chinary Ung's duet from Rising Light in the inaugural Pan-Asian Music Festival at Stanford; Britten's A Ceremony of Carols. She can be heard with the Stanford Chamber Chorale on Kirke Mechem: Seven Joys of Christmas & Beyond and as the soprano soloist in Aquilanti's Prima Missa on the ARSIS Audio label.
In 2008, Georgia received the Margaret Brady Study Grant (Y.E.S. Foundation for the Arts) and advanced into the finals of AudComps at the Classical Singer Convention in Brooklyn. She was the recipient of the Rita Taylor Prize (Stanford Undergraduate Music Awards) consecutively from 2004-2008. In 2007, she was one of ten artists selected as Tomorrow's Stars of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. She placed third in the aria category of the Centro Studi Italiani Concorso Internazionale di Canto in Urbania in 2005. Georgia has received other honors from NATS, Mu Phi Epsilon and the Henry & Maria Holt Memorial Scholarship.
Georgia is completing a Master's degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Jane Randolph. She holds a B.A. in Italian and Music with Distinction from Stanford University, where she also completed a thesis on the Divine Comedy in the Humanities Honors Program.
