Helen Medlyn

Helen Medlyn is as comfortable on the concert platform singing classical repertoire with symphony orchestras as she is sliding over a piano and steaming up a few spectacles with a torch song or two!

A few highlights from this Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate's varied body of work include playing the travesty role of Prince Orlovsky in Lindy Hume's version of Strauss's opera, "Fledermaus" for Opera Australia; portraying the sex-pot Concepcion in Ravel's one act opera, "The Spanish Hour" for NBR NZ Opera; understudying Brangaene in Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" for the English National Opera; performing the vocal cantata "Alice” with the Auckland Philharmonia (written especially for Helen by the New Zealand composer, Gillian Whitehead); singing Elgar's "Sea Pictures” with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Osaka, Japan and Brahms's "Alto Rhapsody” with the London Philharmonic Choir and the Malaysian Philharmonic in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; performing Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde” with Keith Lewis and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; taking the role of Joy Gresham in William Nicholson's play "Shadowlands" for the Mercury Theatre in Auckland; portraying the ill-fated Mrs Parker in Michaelanne Forster's play "Daughters of Heaven” at the Watershed for the Auckland Theatre Company; playing Fraülein Schneider in Kander and Ebb's "Cabaret" for the Auckland Theatre Company; being a frequent guest 'chick singer' with the jazz combo, the Andy Brown Trio; riding, leather-clad, on a Harley Davidson into Government House Gardens to sing at the Auckland Philharmonia Summer Matinée; and last, but not least, creating and performing her 'hell' cabaret shows with her pianist, Penny Dodd.