Wiebke Lehmkuhl

The alto Wiebke Lehmkuhl, who was born in Oldenburg in 1983, initially studied flute with Carin Levine and transverse flute with Barthold Kuijken and Laurence Dean. She began her vocal training with Ulla Groenewold, which she continued with Hanna Schwarz at the Hamburg Musikhochschule starting in 2004 and supplemented with master classes with Klesie Kelly and Ingeborg Danz. After her first appearances at Theater Kiel and the state operas in Hamburg and Hanover, she took up a permanent engagement at Zurich Opera while still a student. In 2012, she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Mozart’s The Magic Flute under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Today, Wiebke Lehmkuhl performs works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Richard Wagner with equal stylistic confidence and appears as a concert singer as well as an opera performer all over the world. On the opera stage, Erda from Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen is her signature role; she has performed the part at the Bavarian Staatsoper, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Opéra national de Paris, and the Royal Opera House in London. At the Bayreuth Festival, she has appeared as Magdalene in Die Meistersinger, Flosshilde in Das Rheingold, and the First Norn in Götterdämmerung. Lehmkuhl also performs regularly in Baroque operas. She made her debut at the National Opera Amsterdam in Handel’s Jephtha; in 2024, she took on the role of Cornelia in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in a new production in Paris. In the 2023-24 season, she appeared on the concert stage with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Trevor Pinnock in Bach’s St. John Passion and sang in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Riccardo Chailly at La Scala in Milan. In June 2025, Wiebke Lehmkuhl is taking part in a newly staged production of Mendelssohn’s Elijah at Zurich Opera at the conclusion of Andreas Homoki’s tenure as General Director. Her discography includes recordings of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Chailly and of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Magnificat with Hans-Christoph Rademann.

Lucerne Festival debut on 10 April 2011 as Maria Cleofe in Handel’s La Resurrezione under Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

August 2024