Katarina Karneus

Mezzo Soprano

Born in Stockholm, Katarina Karnéus studied at Trinity College of Music in London and at the National Opera Studio, sponsored by Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. In 1994 she was the recipient of the Christine Nielsen Award and in 1995 she won the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.

Internationally active as a concert and recital singer, recent engagements have included the Proms in London, the Salzburg Festival with Sir Roger Norrington, the Edinburgh Festival with Sir Charles Mackerras, a concert at Buckingham Palace with Franz Welser Möst, concerts with Ozawa in Tanglewood, Szymanowski Songs with Rattle and the CBSO, Berlioz’s Le Mort de Cleopatre in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder in Dusseldorf and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in Madrid and Barcelona. She appears regularly in recital at the Wigmore Hall, and recently gave recitals at La Monnaie in Brussels, Washington, San Francisco, Vancouver and her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center. Future concert engagements include recitals in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and the Cheltenham Festival, a return to the 2003 Proms, and her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle.

Operatic engagements in recent seasons have included Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Annio/La Clemenza di Tito), Brussels and Netherlands Opera (Cherubino), the Glyndebourne Festival (Dorabella and Clytemnestre in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide), the Opera National de Paris (Dorabella and Meg Page), the Opéra Comique Paris (Rosina/Barbiere and the title role Carmen), Geneva Opera (Marguerite/La Damnation de Faust), Welsh National Opera (Octavian/Der Rosenkavalier, Sesto/Clemenza, Angelina/La Cenerentola, Rosina, Cherubino and the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo.), Bayerische Staatsoper Munich (Cherubino, Dorabella, Sesto/La Clemenza di Tito, and Sesto/Giulio Cesare), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Orfeo), Göteborg (Octavian/Der Rosenkavalier), Metropolitan Opera in New York (Vavara/Katya Kabanova, Olga/Onegin and Siebel/Faust) and the Châtelet in Paris (title role in La Belle Hélène).

Future operatic engagements include Cherubino at the Met, Countess Geschwitz/Lulu for the Bayerische Staatsoper, and the title role in Alceste in Brussels.

In 1999 EMI released her first solo recital disc, of songs by Mahler, Strauss, and Marx, accompanied by Roger Vignoles, described in the Gramophone as “an outright winner….one of the most satisfying CDs of Lieder to appear in recent months.” , followed in 2000 with a recording, also on EMI, of Ravel’s Chansons Madecasses with Stephen Kovacevich, Emanuel Pahud and Truls Mørk, and in 2001 with a recording of orchestral songs by Schreker with the BBC Philharmonic and Vassily Sinaisky. Her most recent CD, of Sibelius songs for Hyperion, has been met with unanimous critical praise – “Karnéus’s voice is glorious, a warm, coppery mezzo with bright soprano tints; and she uses it with a rare candour and spontaneity.” (BBC Music Magazine)