Australian soprano Eleanor Lyons studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Elena Obraztsova, Barry Ryan and Viktoria Dodoka, before joining the Mariinsky Academy for Young Opera Singers in St. Petersburg and pursuing her studies further at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. She is a recipient of the prestigious Vienna State Opera Award of the Australian Opera Foundation.
Early on in her career Eleanor Lyons sang the role of Anne Truelove in Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the Hungarian State Opera, where she later sang Mimì in Puccini's La Bohème. After making her highly acclaimed debut as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni at Opera Australia in Sydney, and in a concert performance at the Jinji Lake Concert Hall in Suzhou (China), she went on to appear at the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent as both Mimì and Gretchen in a stage adaptation of Schumann's Szenen aus Goethes Faust.
Equally sought-after as an international concert soloist, Eleanor Lyons has appeared in Britten's War Requiem with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra conducted by Philippe Herreweghe and the Noord Nederlands Orkest conducted by Stefan Ashbury. The soprano is in regular demand as soloist for Verdi's Messa da Requiem, having notably performed the work in a Zurich Opera production staged by Christian Spuck as part of the Adelaide Festival 2023 and at the Zurich Opera House. Further collaborations have included Gustav Mahler's 4th Symphony and Berio's Folk Songs with the Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Ravel's Chansons Madécasses and Strauss' Four Last Songs with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer, and Mahler's Das klagende Lied with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Simone Young.
Eleanor Lyons maintains a special collaboration with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs Elysées, with whom she toured Europe for both Beethoven's oratorio Christus am Ölberge and his Missa Solemnis. She also made her critically acclaimed debut with the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony under Dennis Russell Davies and celebrated her first appearance at the Vienna Musikverein in Bruckner's Psalm 150 with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Petr Popelka. At the 2022 Festival Les Chorégies d'Orange, she appeared as soloist in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis under John Nelson as part of the French Bastille Day celebrations.
Most recent concert engagements have included Mahler's Symphony No.2 with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo under Kazuki Yamada, Mendelssohn's Symphony No.2 "Lobgesang" with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Marie Jacquot, Strauss' Four Last Songs with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, a New Year's Concert with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem and Mendelssohn's "Lobgesang" once more with the Balthasar Neumann Choir & Ensemble under Thomas Hengelbrock. Eleanor Lyons could be heard for the first time as Freia in two concert performances of Wagner’s Das Rheingoldwith the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Simone Young.
In the current season, Eleanor Lyons will make her debut with the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España, where she will sing Leonore for the first time in two concert performances of Beethoven's Fidelio under the direction of David Afkham. In addition to a bel canto gala with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Eleanor Lyons will also appear as a soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées conducted by Philippe Herreweghe as part of a European tour. Britten's Les Illuminations and selected Mozart concert arias feature on the concert programme with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, while she makes her debut at Turin's Teatro Regio as the soloist in Mahler's Second Symphony under Aziz Shokhakimov. Eleanor Lyons looks forward to two further debuts as a soloist in Dvořák's Stabat Mater with the Rundfunksinfonie-Orchester Berlin, and in Poulenc's Stabat Mater with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Kazuki Yamada.
On the recital stage, Eleanor Lyons regularly collaborates with pianist Stanislav Soloviev, devoting herself primarily to the repertoire of Sergei Rachmaninov and his contemporaries.
