Amanda Holden

Background: Studied music at Oxford and at London’s Guildhall School, where she later taught. Her early career was as a freelance pianist, teacher and music therapist. She also worked at Grove’s Dictionary and, in the late 1980s, she founded and edited the Viking/Penguin Opera Guides. Since translating the libretto of Don Giovanni for Jonathan Miller in 1985, Amanda has written about sixty more texts for the stage, including concert works, songs, music theatre, plays and librettos. She has worked with all Britain’s opera companies, though primarily for ENO who, most recently, commissioned her to translate Lucia di Lammermoor, La bohème and Partenope. Her other Handel translations for ENO are Ariodante, Alcina and Agrippina. Amanda’s librettos include Bliss, for Brett Dean, which Opera Australia premièred in Sydney last year on 12 March, and The Silver Tassie – for which she and composer Mark Anthony Turnage received the 2001 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera