Amira Elmadfa

Mezzo-soprano Amira Elmadfa made her hugely successful debut as Clorinda in the world premiere of Lucia Ronchetti’s monodrama Rivale at the Berlin State Opera when it reopened in 2017. Her performances earned her a nomination for the 2018 Faust Theatre Award.

Since 2015 she has appeared frequently at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, where her roles have included Flora (La traviata), Anna Kennedy in concert performances of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda with Diana Damrau, Smaragdi in Christof Loy’s new production of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini and Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus).

Amira Elmadfa’s repertoire also includes Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Donna Elvira and Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Siébel (Faust), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), Hänsel (Hänsel und Gretel), the Muse / Nicklausse (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), Giunone (La Calisto), the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen, Goffredo (Rinaldo), Rosette (Manon) as well as Dido (Dido and Aeneas). She has performed these and other roles at the Nuremberg, Darmstadt and Braunschweig State Theatres, the Bonn Opera, the Innsbruck Landestheater, the Kiel Theatre, the Dresden State Operetta, the Weimar National Theatre and the Philharmonie in Luxembourg.

Amira Elmadfa read musicology and theatre studies in Vienna and studied singing at Karlsruhe’s University of Music as well as attending masterclasses with Brigitte Fassbaender, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Julia Varady. She won the first prize at the 2011 International Singing Competition ‘Das Lied’, the special lieder prize at the Bergheim Singing Competition and the young singer’s prize at the University of Freiburg Competition. This was followed by song recitals at the Lucerne Festival, at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna and at the Kiel Theatre.

Concert appearances have also taken Amira Elmadfa to the Franconian Music Festival, the Thüringen Bach Festival, the Karlsruhe Handel Festival, the Darmstadt Conference Centre, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Basel and Zurich as well as to Spain and the International Bach Festival on Gran Canaria.