Katharina Konradi & Cosmos Quartet
Biography Katharina Konradi & Cosmos Quartet
Katharina Konradi
Whether in opera, operetta or lied, Katharina Konradi is a storyteller who imbues her characters with verve, intimacy, temperament and intensity. Her full and warm soprano, praised by Opernglas for its “wonderfully agile, fascinating palette of nuances”, captivates audiences and critics alike with its great radiance and cultivated emotionality. “My aim is to rediscover myself in every opera and in every song, to lend my own ego to the role and become one with the character I portray”, is how the singer describes herself.
In the season 2023/24 Katharina Konradi will make guest appearances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London, as Woglinde in Wagner’s Das Rheingold and as Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Vienna State Opera. At the Bavarian State Opera she will be seen as Adele in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and at Zurich Opera House in the role of Valencienne in Lehár’s The Merry Widow. At Hamburg Opera, where she performs regularly, she sings Servilia in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and makes her role debut as Adina in L’elisir d’amore. Lied recitals will again take Katharina Konradi to the Wigmore Hall London and to the Schubertiade Hohenems / Schwarzenberg, as well as to the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, to the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, to the Festival de Granada, to Weimar and to the Schubertiada in Vilabertran.
Katharina Konradi was born in Bishkek and is the world’s first soprano from Kyrgyzstan to have an international career as a lied, concert and opera singer. She moved to Hamburg with her family in 2003 and went on to study with Julie Kaufmann in Berlin and with Christiane Iven in Munich. Master classes with Helmut Deutsch and Klesie Kelly-Moog gave Konradi further musical and artistic momentum in developing her career. In 2016 she won the German Music Competition and was awarded a BBC scholarship for the New Generation Artists Programme (2018-2021).
The singer’s first engagements took her to the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Hamburg State Opera, where she has been an ensemble member since 2018. Debuts at the Dresden State Opera, Bavarian State Opera in Munich and at the Bayreuth Festival followed. Katharina Konradi has since impressed audiences and critics in major soprano roles, including Pamina, Marzelline, Gretel, Adele, Susanna, Zerlina and Nannetta, as well as Morgana, Ännchen, Zdenka and Sophie.
Katharina Konradi is also a welcome guest in concert projects with renowned orchestras, including the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Arcangelo, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the orchestras of Bavarian Radio, hr and MDR, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble under the baton of conductors such as Thomas Hengelbrock, Manfred Honeck, Paavo Järvi, Kent Nagano, Gustavo Dudamel, Andrea Marcon, Philippe Herreweghe and Daniel Harding. Concerts have taken her to the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Konzerthaus in Vienna, as well as to Antwerp, the Felsenreitschule Salzburg and the Philharmonie de Paris.
“In song, I am my own boss: in each of these three-minute operas, I can decide who is singing and what that person wants to express”, says Katharina Konradi, who devotes herself with particular enthusiasm to lied interpretation. Recitals have taken her to renowned concert series for instance at the Wigmore Hall, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Schubertiade Hohenems / Schwarzenberg, the Heidelberger Frühling and the Boulez Saal Berlin, among others.
Katharina Konradi’s artistic creativity is documented on her numerous acclaimed recordings. After Liebende (AvI Music/2021) with songs by Strauss, Mozart and Schubert in which she was accompanied by Daniel Heide, Russian Roots was released by Chandos in 2022. On this recording she is accompanied by the Trio Gaspard in songs by Weinberg, Gubaidulina and Shostakovich, among others. The singer devoted her album Insomnia (2023) to works by Franz Schubert which she recorded together with Ammiel Bushakevitz for Berlin Classics. She also recorded Mozart’s Coronation Mass with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Howard Arman for the BR Klassik label in 2022. Other recordings include Haydns Creation with the Gaechinger Cantorey under Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus) and masses by Mozart with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra and Radio Chorus conducted by Christoph Poppen (Naxos).
