Elīna Garanča

The mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, who was born in Riga in 1976 as the daughter of a conductor and a singer, completed her training at the Latvian Academy of Music. While still a student, she made her debut in 1998 as Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at Latvian National Opera. In 1999 she won the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition, and two years later she emerged victorious from the BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff. Since 2002, following early years as part of the
ensemble of Meiningen Theater and Frankfurt Opera, Elīna Garanča has been working as a freelance artist — the Vienna Staatsoper is her regular home. In 2003 she made her Salzburg Festival debut, appearing in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt; this was followed in 2008 by her first appearance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where she sang Rosina in Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Elīna Garanča has appeared as Dorabella in Così fan tutte and Carmen at London’s Royal Opera House and as Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo at the Opéra national de Paris. One of her showpiece roles is Dalila in Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, which she last sang in London in early summer 2022 under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano. In 2021, she expanded her repertoire at the Vienna Staatsoper with Kundry from Wagner’s Parsifal; two more role debuts will follow in 2022-23: Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser (Salzburg Easter Festival) and Amneris in Verdi’s Aida (again in Vienna). As a concert singer, Elīna Garanča has worked with Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, and Christian Thielemann. She also focuses on lieder singing and in 2020 released an album of Schumann and Brahms. Elīna Garanča is the recipient of the Latvian Grand Music Prize and the European Culture Prize; in 2010, she was named Singer of the Year by Musical America magazine and at MIDEM in Cannes. She has been an Austrian Kammersängerin since 2013.

Lucerne Festival debut on 18 March 2005 in Dvorák’s Requiem, with Mariss Jansons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

July 2022