Amanda Holden

Translator

Amanda Holden (1948-2021) was a musician, lyricist and translator.

She remains the only librettist to have been awarded the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera (2001 for The Silver Tassie, composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage and commissioned by ENO), as well as the only translator to have received an Olivier nomination in the same category (2012 for Castor & Pollux, also for ENO).

She wrote more than 60 English texts for stage and concert performance, the majority of them opera translations.

Amanda was also the founder editor of the Penguin and Viking Opera Guides – encyclopaedic reference books detailing the lives and works of c.900 opera composers. Her papers are collected at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Also for ENO: La bohème, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Giovanni, Handel’s Rodelinda and Partenope.

Notable engagements elsewhere: Madam Butterfly (adaptation for The Kings Head, 2017, originally for Raymond Gubbay and the RAH), Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (Opera Theatre St Louis, 2018), Pascal Dusapin’s Passion (UK premiere, Music Theatre Wales, 2018) and Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen (Munich, 2019).

Her librettos include Bliss for Brett Dean (Opera Australia), and The Silver Tassie (ENO) for Mark-Anthony Turnage (Olivier Award, Outstanding Achievement in Opera, 2001).

She was also founder-editor of the Viking/Penguin Opera Guides. The 2017 edition, The Opera Guide, 100 Popular Composers, is available online.

Learn more on her website www.amandaholden.org.uk