Anna Prohaska

Born in Neu-Ulm, Germany, in 1983, the soprano Anna Prohaska studied singing with Norma Sharp and Brenda Mitchell at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin and made her stage debut at the age of 18 in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at the Komische Oper Berlin. In 2006, she became a member of the ensemble at the Staats­oper Berlin, with which she is still regularly associated today. Her repertoire ranges from Baroque music and the great Mozart operas to modern classics and contemporary scores such as Nono’s Al gran sole and Reimann’s Lear, which she has performed at the Salz­burg Festival. Anna Prohaska has made guest appearances at La Scala in Milan; the Bavarian Staatsoper; and in London, Paris, and Aix-en-Provence. In the 2023-24 season, she sang Angelica in Handel’s Orlando at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Silvia in Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee at the Staatsoper Berlin, and the Angel in Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. In the summer of 2024, she appeared in Barrie Kosky’s staged adaptation of György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments at the festival in Aix-en-Provence, and in 2025 she will take part in the world premiere of Rebecca Saunders’s Acts of Love at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. On the concert platform, Prohaska has worked with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the London Symphony, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Harding, Mariss Jansons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Sir Simon Rattle. Wolfgang Rihm composed the pieces Mnemosyne and Samothrace for her. As a lieder singer, Anna Prohaska presents thematic programs such as Faith and Ecstasy, Sirènes, Behind the Lines, Hamlet and Ophelia, and Paradise Lost. She received the Schneider-Schott ­Music Prize in 2010, the Berlin Art Prize in 2016, and, in 2017, the International Classical Music Award for her album Serpent and Fire. In the fall of 2024, she will be awarded the Opus Klassik Singer of the Year Award for her latest release, Maria Mater Meretrix, featuring music by composers from Guillaume Dufay to George Crumb.

Lucerne Festival debut on 19 March 2010 in Berg’s Lulu Suite under the direction of Claudio Abbado

August 2024