BIOGRAPHY

Irish-Canadian mezzo, Wallis Giunta, is the 2018 International Opera Awards "Young Singer of the Year", and the same year was named the "Young Artist of the Year" by The Arts Desk. She has been praised by OPERA NEWS for her “delectably rich, silver-toned mezzo-soprano”, with her performance as Mozart’s Sesto for the Canadian Opera Company celebrated as “a triumph…remarkable in its combination of intelligence and beauty”. Wallis makes debuts in the 2024/25 season at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Dinah in a new production of Trouble in Tahiti (Bernstein), at Teatro alla Scala as Lilian Holiday in Happy End (Weill), with the Tivoli Festival in Copenhagen in recital, and at the Kölner Philarmonie in concert with Ensemble Modern. For the Vienna Volksoper, she sings Der Trommler in a new production of Mozart/Ullman's KaiserRequiem.

In the 23/24 season, Wallis made an acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall in her signature role of Anna (Weill/Sieben Todsünden), and debuted with the Wiener Symphoniker in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, with Opéra de Lausanne as Dorabella, and at the Maison Symphonique in Montreal as Carmen. She also starred at the Vienna Volksoper as the title role in the Austrian premiere of The Gospel According to the Other Mary (Adams). Wallis joined the Volksoper ensemble in 22/23, and her repertoire there includes Cenerentola, Hänsel, Orlofsky and Cherubino. She also debuted in 2023 at the Komische Oper Berlin in concert with Maestro Brandon Keith Brown, at the Landestheater Linz as Cherubino, at the Staatstheater Darmstadt as the Gymnasiast in Berg's Lulu, and at the Opèra Comique in Paris reprising her role of Dodo in Breaking the Waves (Mazzoli).

Wallis's 21/22 season projects included debuts with Opéra national de Montpellier as Cenerentola, with the Philharmonia Baroque as Tigrane/Radamisto, with the Melk Baroque Festival as Purcell's Dido, with Leeds Lieder in recital and with The Dallas Opera as Rosina/Il Barbiere di Siviglia, along with her return to the BBC Proms Festival for Handel's Solomon at Royal Albert Hall, and in recital with guitarist Sean Shibe.

Her 20/21 pandemic season looked quite different than expected, but she was fortunate to have had several opportunities to perform, including the title role in Maria de Buenos Aires with Opera de Lyon, and Anna I in Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins in a live-streamed new production for Opera North. She was to have made debuts with the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 2, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra & Maestro Vladimir Jurowski in Wagner's Ring Cycle, with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with the Bochumer Symphoniker in Wagner's Götterdämmerung, and with the Academy of Ancient Music in J.C. Smith's Paradise Lost. She also lost planned returns to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein for Alcina, and to the Edinburgh Festival in Mahler's Das Klagende Lied.

Her 2019/20 season got off to a stellar start with debuts at Seattle Opera and The Royal Swedish Opera as Cenerentola, with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein as Bradmante in Handel's Alcina, at the Sydney Opera House in a solo recital, and at the Adelaide Festival reprising her role of Dodo in the acclaimed 2019 Scottish Opera / Edinburgh Festival production of Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves. If not for the pandemic, she would have returned in the same role to the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Maestro Yannick Nezet-Seguin, along with debuts at Boston Lyric Opera as Sesto in Handel's Giulio Cesare, for the London Philharmonia Orchestra & Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen singing Mahler's Das Klagende Lied, and at the Royal Concertgebouw in recital.

Highlights of Wallis's 18/19 season were her BBC Proms Festival debut in a program celebrating Leonard Bernstein, debuting with the Grange Festival as Cherubino at The Barbican, with the MDR Sinfonieorchester as Haydn's Berenice, and with the Royal Opera House Muscat in La Traviata. She also debuted the title roles in Carmen and Der Rosenkavalier, along with Rossini's Rosina for Oper Leipzig, and Idamante for Toronto's Opera Atelier. She began the 2017/18 season with two role debuts for Opera North, the title role in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortiléges, and Dinah in Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, both to great critical acclaim. She returned to Oper Leipzig, where she has been an ensemble member since 2015/16, for her house roles of Angelina, Cherubino, Rossweise & Wellgunde, and debuted Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus and Der Gymnasiast in a new production of Berg's Lulu. She also returned to the Munich Radio Orchestra, Toronto's Koerner Hall and the Music & Beyond Festival in concert, and debuted at the Oregon Music Festival as Anna I in Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins.

The 2016/17 season saw her debuts with Opera North, performing the title role in Rossini's La Cenerentola, with Teatro Communale di Bolzano as Cherubino, and with the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra in concert. Wallis returned to Opera Atelier to debut the title role in Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, and to both the Toronto Symphony and the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla for new productions of Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins. The 2015/16 season saw her make several major European debuts, including for Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (Adams' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky), Oper Frankfurt (Carmen), Oper Leipzig (La Cenerentola, Le Nozze di Figaro, Faust, Der Ring des Nibelungen), the Hamburg Symphony (Candide), and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in concert.

Early in 2015, she returned to The Metropolitan Opera as Olga in their new production of The Merry Widow, directed by Susan Stroman. Other recent highlights include returns to the Canadian Opera Company as Dorabella in Atom Egoyan’s new production of Cosí fan tutte (2014), to Opera Lyra Ottawa as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro (2015), and to Opera Atelier as Bradamante in a new period-production of Alcina (2014), along with her debut for the Taipei Symphony Orchestra as Annio in La Clemenza di Tito (2013). In June 2014, she recorded her first album with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin (NAXOS), of a new work by American composer, William Perry. Wallis also debuted in 2014 with Toronto's 21C Music Festival in Louis Andriessen’s one-woman-opera, Anaïs Nin, and brought her acclaimed recital program of Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins to Miami, New York, Toronto and Ottawa.

She had a whirlwind 2012/13 season, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in Rigoletto, debuting the roles of Sesto & Annio in La Clemenza di Tito with the Canadian Opera Company, making her Paris debut with Le Théâtre du Châtelet as Tiffany in John Adams’s I Was Looking at the Ceiling..., and singing Dorabella in the Met + Juilliard production of Cosí fan tutte at Lincoln Center. She also made debuts with Fort Worth Opera, L’Opéra de Montréal, the Edmonton, Seville and Nuremberg Symphonies, the Stuttgart Festivalorchester, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Wallis is the grateful recipient of the 2016 Bernard Diamant Prize and several major grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2013 Novick Career Advancement Grant, the 2013 Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Career Development Award, and multiple prizes from the George London Foundation. Wallis is a 2013 graduate of both the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program & the Juilliard School’s Artist Diploma in Opera Studies, and a 2011 graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio. She has also studied at The Glenn Gould School, the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute, the Aspen Music Festival & School and the International Meistersinger Akademie in Germany.