The New York mezzo-soprano Margaret Thompson will perform in La Traviata at the Kennedy Center with Washington Opera in their 2008/09 season. She will also sing in Jenufa with Karita Mattila and perform Emilia in Otello for Los Angeles Opera's 2007/08 season. Ms. Thompson covered the role of Venus in Tannhäuser and sang Hansel in Hansel and Gretel for Los Angeles Opera in the 2006/07 season. She also appeared at the Kennedy Center singing Suzuki in Madama Butterfly with the Washington National Opera in November 2006 and at Lincoln Center in April 2006 in Bach's B-Minor Mass at Avery Fisher Hall. She sang Octavian and Annina in Der Rosenkavalier for Los Angeles Opera in 2005 as well as Suzuki in Robert Wilson's production of Madama Butterfly in 2006. She also performed Olga in LA Opera's world premiere of Deborah Drattell's Nicholas and Alexandra with Plácido Domingo singing Rasputin and Mstislav Rostropovich conducting. In February 2007 she will be performing Rosina in a staged production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Thompson made her Wagnerian debut as Rossweisse in Die Walküre in Madrid with Plácido Domingo, Waltraud Meier and Alan Titus in 2003 and was recently heard singing the Flower Maiden and Alto Soloist in Parsifal again with Plácido Domingo for LA Opera.

She began her career in the opera houses of Germany where she sang over 60 operatic and oratorio roles such as Octavian, Charlotte, Eboli, Sesto, Rosina, Composer and Cherubino, and has performed with Vladimir Chernov, Patricia Racette, Matti Salminen, Dolora Zajick, Wolfgang Brendel, Alan Titus and conductors such as Peter Schneider, Julius Rudel, Kent Nagano, Mstislav Rostropovich, Lawrence Foster, Asher Fisch and Gabrielle Ferro.

Her career has expanded into such rarities as Anna in Kurt Weill's Die Burgschaft at the Spoleto Festival from which the first complete recording of the opera was released by EMI Classics. At Carnegie Hall she sang Charmian in Antony and Cleopatra with Carol Vaness. She also sang Nastassja in the world premiere of Thomas Blomenkamp's The Idiot in 2001. She performed the title role in the first German premiere of Theo Loevendie's Èsmeé which was recently released on CD, Margareta in Schumann's Genoveva, the Queen in Heinrich Marschner's Hans Heiling, Berta in Judith Weir's The Blond Eckbert, the Witch in Rusalka, and the Mother/Alto in Franz Schmidt's The Book with Seven Seals.

Ms. Thompson was chosen by Christa Ludwig to receive the Tirolian Academy First Prize and was nominated as "Best Young Singer" in the 1999 Openwelt Yearbook. She was awarded the "Bielefelder Operntaler," a silver medallion, for "Best Singer of the Year" and was a finalist/prize winner in the Fourth International Sylvia Gezsty Coloratura Competition held in Luxembourg.

A highly acclaimed recital singer, she has sung Bach's B-Minor Mass at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Ms. Thompson has been celebrated in such masterworks of the German concert stage as the Alto Soloist in the B minor Mass, the Cantata No. 62, Magnificat, and Christmas Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart´s C minor Mass, his Litaniae de venerabli altaris sacramento, and his Requiem, to Beethoven´s 9th Symphony, Händel´s Messiah and Mendelsohn´s Elijah. Her special affinity for the works of Gustav Mahler such as Das Lied von der Erde, and Das klagende Lied have led to adventures in French oratorio masterworks as well, among them Berlioz´s Roméo et Juliette, Saint-Saens' Christmas Oratorio, and the Duruflé Requiem. Italian oratorio's Rossini´s Stabat Mater, and Verdi´s Requiem are regular parts of her oratorio repertoire. Lesser known works such as Fanny Mendelsohn´s Hiob, Felix Mendelsohn´s Walpurgisnacht, Carl-Maria von Weber´s Jubel Mass, Heinrich von Herzogenberg´s Birth of Christ, Franz Schmidt´s Book with Seven Seals, and Robert Schumann´s Scenes from Goethe´s Faust round out her rarities of the German romantic period. From the modern repertoire, Ms. Thompson has sung Te Deums composed by Kodály and Penderecki.