Maureen Batt is celebrated for her “rich, warm sound and masterful acting” (Opera Canada). Recently, Maureen’s solo career has focused on promoting Canadian classical contemporary repertoire by collaborating with established and emerging composers to commission, première, and re-perform their works. Her debut album, Lady of the Lake (Leaf Music/Naxos, June 2017) includes song cycles by Schubert and Halifax-based composer Fiona Ryan and was nominated for Classical Recording of the Year (2018) by ECMA and Music Nova Scotia.
Maureen is the co-artistic director of Essential Opera—an opera company founded in 2010 with Erin Bardua—and part of the Indie Opera Toronto collective. In 2015, Maureen founded Crossing Borders, a contemporary classical recital series which has toured programs of art song, opera arias, musical theatre, and electronics to the United States and Canada. This past fall, she toured Colombia with a program featuring Canadian and Colombian composers.
Her formal training includes a Master of Music from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Music from Dalhousie University, and a Bachelor of Arts from St. Thomas University (French and Spanish). She has been the recipient of awards from the SOCAN Foundation, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, SSHRC, FACTOR, Music Nova Scotia, and Arts Nova Scotia.
She has been engaged by the Open Waters Festival, Orchestra Toronto, Classics by the Bay, Windsor Symphony Orchestra, VoiceBox, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Maritime Concert Opera, Opera Nova Scotia, New Hamburg Live!, Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, Whale Song Theatre, The Toy Piano Composers, and recently performed as part of Neptune Theatre’s bonus features with her trio Diva Station.
Memorable opera credits from the standard repertoire include Musetta, La Bohème (Puccini), Susanna, Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart); Zerlina, Don Giovanni (Mozart); Despina, Così fan tutte (Mozart); Belinda, Dido and Aeneas (Purcell); Yum-Yum, The Mikado (Sullivan), Polly, The Threepenny Opera (Weill); Morgana, Alcina (Händel); Nina, Chérubin (Massenet). She has also created many Canadian opera roles, including Helen in Monica Pearce’s Aunt Helen, about the folklorist Helen Creighton, and Sister Mary Francis in Elizabeth Raum’s opera, Time of Trouble, about the founding of Mount Saint Vincent University.
Maureen has been on faculty at the Halifax Summer Opera Festival for Massenet’s Cendrillon, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Händel’s Alcina, and returns this year for Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and John Blow’s Venus and Adonis. She is a frequent festival adjudicator, and offers masterclasses and workshops in the Maritimes and Toronto.
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