Biography

Soprano Diana Damrau has been performing on the world’s leading opera and concert stages for two decades. Her vast repertoire spans both lyric soprano and coloratura roles including the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor (La Scala, Bavarian State Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House), Manon (Vienna State Opera, Metropolitan Opera) and La Traviata (La Scala, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Opéra national de Paris and Bavarian State Opera) as well as Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte(Metropolitan Opera, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House, Bavarian State Opera).

Invested as Kammersängerin of the Bavarian State Opera (2007) and holder of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art (2010), Diana Damrau has forged close links with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich where she has been seen in new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor, Les contes d’Hoffmann (the four heroines), Ariadne on Naxos(Zerbinetta), The Silent Woman (Aminta), Die Zauberflöte(Queen of the Night) and Rigoletto (Gilda). Other high profile appearances have included La Traviata (Violetta), Der Rosenkavalier (Sophie), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Konstanze) as well as Le Nozze di Figaro (Susanna and Contessa d’Almaviva).

The Metropolitan Opera has been a house in which the soprano has performed her signature roles, been broadcast in HD to cinemas globally and made seven role debuts since her own debut there as Zerbinetta in 2005. Highlights have included new productions of Rigoletto (Gilda), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rosina), Le Comte Ory (Adèle) and Les pêcheurs des perles (Leïla). Other engagements have included the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, La Traviata, Manon, La Sonnambula and La Fille du Régimentand Roméo et Juliette. She was also the first singer in Metropolitan Opera history to perform the roles of Pamina and Queen of the Night in different performances of the same run of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.

Diana Damrau has twice participated in the annual inaugural performance at La Scala di Milano; in 2004 in the title role of Salieri’s Europa Riconosciuta at the house’s grand reopening and in 2013 as the title role in a new production of La Traviata. Damrau has also appeared there as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor as part of Milan’s Expo in 2015. In 2005 she made her role debut as Susanna in a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro and returned in 2016 in another new production of the piece, but on this occasion as La Contessa.

The soprano has also performed contemporary works for the opera stage in roles written especially for her, most notably as the title role in Iain Bell’s operatic adaptation of Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress (Theater an der Wien, 2013) and as Drunken Woman/Gym Instructress in Lorin Maazel’s 1984 (Royal Opera House, 2005).

In September 2017, Diana Damrau opened the concert season of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam with selected Mozart Arias. At the reopening gala of the Berliner Staatsoper she interpreted together with the Berliner Staatskapelle under the baton of Daniel Barenboim Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. 

In December 2018 she starred as the title role in a new production of La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera. Moreover, Diana Damrau is “Artist in Residence” at the Barbican Centre London in 2018/19.

In the 2019/20 season she continues her fruitful collaboration with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mariss Jansons and presents, in selected European cities and at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Four last songs by Richard Strauss. In addition she is going to perform recitals with Sir Antonio Pappano and returns to the Scala di Milano in Roméo et Juliette, the Bavarian State Opera in I Masnadieri and the Metropolitan Opera in Maria Stuarda.

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