Sigrún Hjálmtýsdóttir

A soprano, born in Reykjavík on 8 August 1955 and brought up in the west of the city. Everybody calls her Diddú. She started in popular music, singing with Spilverk þjóðanna from 1975 to 1978 and with Brunaliðið from 1978 to 1980. In 1984 she took an ASGM in solo singing and teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and she studied privately in Italy in 1987 and 1988. Her first opera role was Olympia the doll in The Tales of Hoffmann at the National Theatre. For the Icelandic Opera she has sung Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Gilda in Rigoletto, Papagena and the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Lucia di Lammermoor, Violetta in La traviata, Adina in The Elixir of Love and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, along with three roles in Wagner’s Ring and Kæthe in Le Pays by J.G. Ropartz at Listahátíð in 2006. She has sung often with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and with orchestras across Europe and in the United States, has made four records with the Iceland Symphony, and has sung on more than seventy in all. She teaches at Söngskóli Sigurðar Demetz.