Amanda Holden

Amanda Holden grew up in a medical family in which music-making was part of everyday life. After a university degree in music she won a scholarship to the Guildhall School, London as an accompanist. She also studied Music Therapy and started the department at the Charing Cross Hospital – now relocated to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She remained at the Guildhall, teaching the piano, and worked as a freelance accompanist until, by chance in 1985, she found herself – with her ex-husband Anthony – translating Don Giovanni for Jonathan Miller at English National Opera. She went on to write c.60 more translations and several librettos – these include Bliss for Brett Dean and The Silver Tassie for Mark Anthony Turnage, for which she became the first writer to receive the Olivier Award: Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

Regarded as the “wittiest and most adroit of contemporary practitioners of this difficult craft” (Daily Telegraph), Amanda’s work is regularly performed throughout the English speaking world. Translations recently for ENO include Rodelinda (Handel) and Caligula (Glanert); her Castor & Pollux (Rameau) received an Olivier nomination. Amanda’s translations of La bohème and Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti) will be at ENO in the coming 2018-19 season. Recent work includes English versions of Gluck’s Orpheus (Opera Theatre of St Louis, June 2018) and Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen (to be premiered in 2019). Amanda is also founder-editor of the Penguin Opera Guides; The Viking Opera Guide and The New Penguin Opera Guide contain 850 articles on opera composers and their works; the latest (5th) edition, The Opera Guide, 100 Popular Composers, is available online: www.amandaholden.org.uk