Versatile and unconventional soprano Judith Dodsworth is an accomplished performer across the genres of opera, oratorio, chamber music and art song. A graduate of Canberra School of Music and the University of Melbourne, she furthered her studies in London and Vienna where she worked extensively with such groups as the Arnold Schönberg Chor, Concentus Vocalis Wien and NeuOper Wien. 

Her numerous and varied operatic roles include Greta in Brian Howard’s Metamorphosis for Victorian Opera, the title role and Mercedes in Carmen for OzOpera, the lead soprano in Opiume (world première) for the Singapore and Hong Kong Arts Festivals, Eugenia in The Country Philosopher and the title role in Rameau’s Pygmalion (presented as Cantata) in Canberra for Stopera and Mrs P in Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. 

In 2012 she sang the role of Clara for the première of Gordon Kerry’s Midnight Son for Victorian Opera at less than twenty-four hours notice. In 2013 her performance in Peter Maxwell Davies’ seminal one-woman opera Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot with Syzygy Ensemble was described by Limelight magazine as “positively mesmerising”.  Recently she created the role of Sophie in From A Black Sky by Sandra France for the Canberra Centenary Festival. 

Increasingly in demand as an exponent of new music, Judith has performed, recorded and premièred numerous vocal, operatic and chamber works by composers throughout Australia including Kevin March, Nicholas Vines, Ann Carr-Boyd, Mary Finsterer, Johanna Selleck, Stuart Greenbaum, Nirmali Fenn, Larry Sitsky, Peter Sculthorpe, Calvin Bowman, Matthias Pintscher and John Taverner. Her performance of the Australian première of György Kurtàg’s Messages of the Late Miss R V Troussova with the Australian National Academy of Music and Brett Dean in 2010 cemented her reputation as a formidable interpreter of challenging scores. 

 As an oratorio soloist Judith’s repertoire is similarly diverse and has included Carmina Burana (Orff), A Child of Our Time (Tippett), Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah and Dixit Dominus, Charpentier’s Te Deum, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and many sacred works of Schubert, Haydn, Mozart and Bach.