BIOGRAPHY
With her unmistakably rich and luminous tone, Berlin-based Portuguese soprano Inês Simões is known for her interpretations of contemporary music, including 27 premieres of operatic, symphonic, electronic, and chamber music repertoire under her belt.
In recent years, a natural progression into the spinto soprano fach has opened up the possibilities of larger-scale Germanic works with Strauss’s Salome added to her repertoire, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder featuring regularly in her concert appearances and her first interpretation of Isolde’s Liebestod coming up in autumn 2023. Inês’s love for all things from the first half of the 20th century can be witnessed by her Barbican Hall debut with Berg’s Wozzeck Suite under the baton of Sian Edwards and, more recently, with a recital for Arte no Tempo’s festival Reencontros de M]usica Contemporânea with Schoenberg‘s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten.
2023/2024 will see Inês’s return to the main season of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos with the first production of Augusto Machado’s operetta Maria da Fonte in modern times. She will also make her debut at the Cistermúsica festival with a program dedicated to French chamber music of Fauré and Chausson and add Mahler’s Rückert Lieder to her repertoire. 2022/23 saw an exciting new collaboration with Brazilian flautist James Strauss with the release of Poema for Universal Music Group, with works from the last hundred years written for this unusual pairing, and concerts in Portugal and Austria.
Concert highlights include Inês Simões’s debut at the Gulbenkian Foundation, a tour-de-force concert where she premiered six new works with the Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by Magnus Lindberg. She was subsequently invited back to premiere Jamie Man’s opera Play conducted by Hannu Lintu, and to sing alongside Iestyn Davies in Handel’s Solomon and The Messiah. She enjoys a regular collaboration with Miso Music, who has commissioned new works especially for her. Inês has performed with orchestras such as the Camerata Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and sung for the Dias da Música Festival, Oxford Lieder Festival and BBC Radio 3 In Tune.
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Alongside operatic world premieres of works like A Canção do Bandido by Nuno Côrte-Real (Teatro Nacional de São Carlos and Teatro Trindade co-production) and Tabacaria and Flores do Mal by Luís Soldado (Inestética), Inês is proud to have sung in Portuguese premieres of operas Onheama by João Guilherme Ripper (Teatro Nacional de São Carlos and Festival Terras Sem Sombra co-production), King Harald’s Saga by Judith Weir, The Waiter’s Revenge by Stephen Oliver, and Hummus by Zad Moultaka.
Inês is one half of Duo Tágide, whose bold programming encompasses works from both past and present as well as a dedicated place for Portuguese songs. They appear regularly in major national festivals and venues as well as for the Portuguese classic radio Antena 2. In 2014 they launched their first album Alma Ibérica, showcasing Iberian Art Song. They have recently won a Fundação GDA Award to release a new recording in 2024, dedicated to song cycles by Portuguese composers of the 21st century.
Last edited July 2023.
