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 BBC Proms in London (most recently Ravel Shéhérazade), the Salzburg Festival with Sir Roger Norrington, Handel’s Solomon at the Salzburg Pfingsten Barock Festival with Ivor Bolton, the Edinburgh Festival with Sir Charles Mackerras, a concert at Buckingham Palace with Franz Welser Möst, Szymanowski Love Songs of Hafiz with the CBSO and Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, Szymanowski Stabat Mater, also for CBSO, Berlioz’s Le Mort de Cleopatre and a recital at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder in Düsseldorf, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in Madrid and Barcelona, Berlioz Roméo et Juliette for the BBC Proms with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov, Der Rosenkavalier with the Cleveland Orchestra , Mahler Symphony No 8 with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson-Thomas, Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestra, Bach Christmas Oratorio with the Orquestra Sinfonica de Barcelona, La Damnation de Faust in Lyon, Haydn Scena di Berenice with the NDR Hamburg,and concerts with the Stockholm Radio Symphony Orchestra, Malmo Symphony, Detroit Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra. She appears regularly in recital at the Wigmore Hall and has given recitals at the Cheltenham and Edinburgh International Festivals, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Frankfurt Opera, Washington, San Francisco, Vancouver and her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center.
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, Clytemnestre in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide, Sesto/Giulio Cesare and Brangäne/Tristan und Isolde); 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, and Komponist/Ariadne auf Naxos), Welsh National Opera (Octavian/Der Rosenkavalier, Sesto/Clemenza, Angelina/La Cenerentola, Rosina, Cherubino and the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo.) English National Opera (title role in Xerxes), Bayerische Staatsoper Munich (Cherubino, Dorabella, Sesto/La Clemenza di Tito, Sesto/Giulio Cesare and Countess Geschwitz/Lulu), Frankfurt Opera (title role of Arianne et Barbe-Bleue), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Orfeo), Staatsoper Berlin (Elisabetta/Maria Stuarda), Göteborg (Octavian/Der Rosenkavalier), Metropolitan Opera in New York (Vavara/Katya Kabanova, Olga/Onegin,, Siebel/Faust, Cherubino and Rosina/Il barbiere di Siviglia), the Châtelet in Paris (title role in La Belle Hélène), Baden Baden (Brangäne) and La Monnaie, Brussels (title role of Alceste), and a concert performance of Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel with the Berlin Philharmonic and Mark Elder.
Future operatic engagements include Brangäne for the 2009 Glyndebourne Festival, the title roles in a new production of Xerxes for the Royal Swedish Opera, Ruggiero in Alcina in Goteborg, and Donna Elvira Don Giovanni for Covent Garden. Future concert engagements include Mahler 2 with the San Francisco Symphony, Berlioz Les Nuit d’été with BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Elijah in Barcelona and Beethoven Symphony No 9 with the Vienna Symphony Orchstra.
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 recording of Sibelius songs for Hyperion was met with unanimous critical praise, and Hyperion has just released a volume of Grieg songs, described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘a glorious disc’. Another recent release is Szymanowski’s Love Songs of Hafiz with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle on EMI, and her Glyndebourne Brangäne can now be seen on DVD.
Last updated August 2009. Contact Opus 3 Artists for the most up-to-date version.
