Caroline Melzer

Caroline Melzer: brilliant. 

Der Standard

Caroline Melzer dazzles with her “clear, broad, and bright soprano“ (Eleonore Büning FAZ) and her unusually wide repertoire, ranging from big lyrical and jugendlich-dramatic roles to Operetta divas and contemporary works written specifically for her. 

The 2025/26 season begins for Caroline Melzer with the season opening at the Opéra de Lille, where she will participate in a project in several performance formats under the direction of Vicente Larrañaga and premiere a work by Michael Wertmüller as part of a large-scale parade. In autumn, she will return to the Stuttgart State Opera to perform as Susanna in Florentina Holzinger's radical reinterpretation of Hindemith's Sancta Susanna, SANCTA. She recently performed chamber music at the Kronberg Festival with u.a. Martin Helmchen as well as Messiaen's Harawi (Cédric Pescia) in Geneva; in the current season, she will give recitals in Mannheim, Berlin (Kurtág Kafka Fragments) and Zurich. In February 2026, she will perform again works by György Kurtág (4 Capriccios Op. 9, songs on texts by Anna Achmatowa Op. 41) together with the Collegium Novum Zurich and Heinz Holliger – a contribution to the 100th birthday of the Hungarian composer, with whom Caroline Melzer has had close ties for many years.

Her first permanent engagement took the expressive singer to the Komische Oper Berlin in 2007, where she sang numerous roles such as Contessa, Fiordiligi, Mimì, Giulietta (Tales of Hoffmann), Lisa (Queen of Spades), Lisa (The Land of Smiles), Leonore in the first version of Fidelio, and Cordelia in Aribert Reimann's Lear in the highly acclaimed new production by Hans Neuenfels. From 2010 until 2017 she was a permanent ensemble member at the Vienna Volksoper, where she sang the title roles in Rusalka and The Bartered Bride and Gräfin Mariza, as well as Donna Elvira, Micaela, Liù, and Sieglinde in Ring in one evening (arrangement by Loriot). Guest engagements have taken Caroline Melzer to the Berlin State Opera as the First Lady, to Savonlinna and Tokyo as the Merry Widow, to Vienna and Budapest as Angel in Péter Eötvös' Angels in America, and to Kassel as the Armed Woman in the world premiere of Felix Leuschner's Einbruch mehrerer Dunkelheiten. In 2022, she sang works by Schönberg and Zemlinsky with the Munich Chamber Orchestra. At the Ruhrtriennale, she appeared in the world premiere of Michael Wertmüller's D • I • E in 2021 and in Ich geh unter lauter Schatten in 2022. This was followed by role debuts in Freiburg as Agathe (Der Freischütz), Marie (Wozzeck), Foreign Princess (Rusalka) and Elisabetta (Don Carlos).

Contemporary music is a particular focus of her work. Of great importance were her collaborations with Aribert Reimann, who set the song cycle Rilke-Fragmente and the “Scene of Stella” (Goethe) to music for her, with Manfred Trojahn (Zwetajewa and Nietzsche Lieder), as well as with Wolfgang Rihm on the occasion of the world premiere of the Zwetajewa Lieder and most recently the Nossack Lieder at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In addition, she has given many other world premieres of works by Emanuele Casale, Seán Doherty, Deidre Gribbin, Stefan Heucke, Bernhard Lang, Enno Poppe, Jüri Reinvere, Steffen Schleiermacher, Vladimir Tarnopolski, and Kate Whitley. She also worked with pianist Axel Bauni, and ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, musikFabrik, and Ensemble Intercontemporain. She passionately devotes herself to the vocal works of György Kurtág: in addition to the Kafka Fragments, which she performs together with the violinist Nurit Stark (the CD of which, released on the BIS label in 2015, has been awarded the German Record Critics' Prize), she has performed many of the composer’s chamber music works.

In the course of her activities as a lied and concert singer, Caroline Melzer has appeared in renowned halls such as the Suntory Hall Tokyo, the Philharmonie Berlin, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Liederhalle Stuttgart, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Musikverein Vienna, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Concert Hall Tongyeong, the Auditorium Grafenegg, the Kunstzentrum deSingel Antwerpen, the Cité de la Musique Paris, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Tonhalle Zürich, the Philharmonie Essen, the Konzerthaus Dortmund, deDoelen Rotterdam, Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow, and the Town Hall Birmingham She appears on two CDs in the complete recording of Schumann's songs released by Naxos in 2022. She has worked with conductors such as Péter Eötvös, François-Xavier Roth, Titus Engel, Patrick Lange, André de Ridder, Alfred Eschwè, Konrad Junghänel, Jac van Stehen, Christoph Poppen, Stefan Soltesz, Peter Rundel, Michael Sanderling and Helmuth Rilling.

Caroline Melzer taught at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. Since 2022, she has taught a class at the Zurich University of the Arts, and since 2023, she has held a professorship in Mannheim. She studied singing with Rudolf Piernay and Vera Scherr and song interpretation with Ulrich Eisenlohr and Irwin Gage.

Season 2025/26

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