Samantha Clarke

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Soprano
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Contact

Keiron Cooke

Keiron Cooke

Associate Director
Charlotte Bateman

Charlotte Bateman

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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About Samantha

Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and a Tait Memorial Trust Scholar.

In the 2024/25 season Samantha returns to Opera Australia as Violetta La traviata and to Pinchgut Opera as Cleopatra Giulio Cesare and she appears in concert with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and the West Australian Symphony, and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras.

Recent highlights have included Contessa Le nozze di Figaro for Garsington Opera; Fiordiligi Cosi fan tutte for Opera Queensland, the Grange Festival and in Japan for the Seiji Ozawa Music Academy; the title role in Theodora for Pinchgut Opera; Violetta for the West Australian Opera; Musetta La bohème for Opera North; the title role in the Buxton Festival’s award-winning pasticcio Georgiana; Marzelline in concert performances of Fidelio with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Simone Young and the title role in The Golden Cockerel for the Adelaide Festival.

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Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Follow Samantha

Season Highlights

Sep 2024 - Sep 2024
West Australian Symphony Orchestra
Mahler Symphony No.8 Asher Fisch (conductor)
Oct 2024 - Oct 2024
West Australian Symphony Orchestra
Mozart Requiem Umberto Clerici (conductor)
Nov 2024 - Nov 2024
Pinchgut Opera
Giulio Cesare (Cleopatra) Erin Helyard (conductor)

Video

Photos

Selected Repertoire

BeethovenSymphony No. 9
MahlerSymphony No. 2   •   Symphony No. 4

News

Press

  • Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Cleopatra)

    Pinchgut Opera
    Nov 2024 - Nov 2024

    • All hail Samantha Clarke! We have a new Cleopatra. Technically secure, acoustically gorgeous and dramatically convincing, she studied with Yvonne Kenny and has inherited the mantle from her teacher, showcasing the many facets of Cleopatra’s story, from Ptolomeo’s bossy sister in Non disperar, to smouldering goddess in V’adoro, pupille. Her lament Piangero la sorte mia is finely nuanced, silken smooth and beautifully coloured. She absolutely rocks her final aria, Da tempeste.

    • Clarke has a substantial voice with a beautiful, lyrically warm quality and an alluring stage presence – a must for this most enigmatic of historical figures.

    • One of the most appealing features of Samantha Clarke’s Cleopatra was just the appropriate reaction to the events of the drama (and Armfield’s direction of it). As Lydia, deceiving Caesar in disguise, accompanied by the muses on Parnassus (excellent ensemble playing, mostly unconducted), she was naïve and alluring. At the opposite end, her desperation found touching depths in Act three’s “Piangerò” that Händel, fully aware of the emotional demands of the aria, wrote in the unusual key of E major. The human factor was delicately demonstrated as she took off her wig and expressed her radiating musicality with portamenti and absolute control of her tone in her lament (“Se pietà”). She gave a commanding performance throughout.

Discography