Eva Johansson

The Danish soprano Eva Johansson completed her vocal training at the Royal Music Conservatory and at the Opera Academy of her native Copenhagen. At the Royal Opera House there she made her stage debut in 1983 as the Countess in Mozart’s Figaro. In 1988 she was signed by Götz Friedrich for an extensive engagement with Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she initially performed such lyric roles as Pamina in The Magic Flute and Liù in Puccini’s Turandot but soon added young dramatic soprano roles to her repertoire and, as a Wagner singer, appeared as Gutrune in Götterdämmerung and Eva in Die Meistersinger. In 1988 Johansson was invited to the Bayreuth Festival for the first time, where she made her debut as Freia in Das Rheingold and later also appeared as Elsa in Lohengrin and as Sieglinde in Die Walküre. Further credits have taken her to such international stages as the Staatsoper companies in Munich, Vienna, and Dresden, the Royal Opera House in London, Zurich Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Johansson has gradually expanded her repertoire to include the major dramatic soprano roles. In 2007 she sang her first Brünnhilde in the Ring at the Vienna Staatsoper and later performed this role under the baton of Simon Rattle in Aix-en-Provence and at the Salzburg Easter Festival. Meanwhile she has added the roles of Isolde in Tristan, Strauss’s Elektra, and Emilia Marty from Janácek’s The Makropulos Case to her repertoire. Eva Johansson has worked with many renowned conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Valery Gergiev, James Levine, Christian Thielemann, and Franz Welser-Möst. In 2001 she was made a Berlin Kammersängerin.

May 2013