Anna Prohaska

Source: Askonas Holt

Austrian-English soprano Anna Prohaska made her debut aged 18 at Berlin’s Komische Oper as Flora in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and soon after with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, entering the ensemble at age 23. She has since gone on to have an extraordinary international career with some of the world’s greatest opera houses and
orchestras, though the Staatsoper remains h er artistic home.
Operatic highlights include Zabelle in the world premiere of George Benjamin’s Picture a Day Like This & Morgana Alcina for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Pamina Die Zauberflöte, Constance Dialogues des Carmélites and Nannetta Falstaff for the Royal Opera House, Pelléas et Mélisande for the Hamburgische Staatsoper, Anne Trulove The Rake’s Progress, Merab Saul and Angelica Orlando for Theater an der Wien, Zerlina Don Giovanni for La
Scala, title role Orphée et Eurydice for Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Blonde Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Opéra national de Paris, Sophie Der Rosenkavalier in Baden-Baden, Iphis Jephtha in Amsterdam, as well as Marzelline Fidelio, Purcell’s Fairy Queen, Blonde, Ännchen Der Freischütz and Adele Die Fledermaus for the Bayerische Staatsoper.
A regular guest at the Salzburg Festival, Anna has appeared as Vitellia, Zerlina, Despina, Deola in Luigi Nono’s Al Gran Sole Carico d’Amore, Susanna and Cordelia in Aribert Reimann’s King Lear.
Noted for her diverse repertoire with the Deutsche Staatsoper , her roles include Anne Trulove, Susanna, Sophie, Pamina, Ilia, Oscar, Blonde, Poppea, Euridice, Aricie, Ännchen, Anna Reich as well as world premieres by Beat Furrer and Peter Ruzicka.
Conductors she has worked with include Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Ra ttle, Philippe Jordan, Gustavo Dudamel and René Jacobs.
In huge demand on the concert platform, Anna has performed regularly with the Berliner Philharmoniker since her debut with them aged 24, performing under Rattle, Harding and Abbado. Other orchestras include the Wiener Philharmoniker under Boulez, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jansons, Harding, Blomstedt and Nézet-Séguin, the LSO under Rattle, Los Angeles Philharmonic under Dudamel, the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra under François -Xavier Roth, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra under John Eliot Gardiner, the Cleveland Orchestra under Welser -Möst and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under von Dohnányi.
Recent seasons have
included artistic residencies at the Konzerthaus Berlin, Konzertahus Dortmund, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Phil harmonie Luxembourg.
Plans for the 24/25 season include Zabelle (George Benjamin’s Picture a Day Like This) conducted by the composer for Opéra Comique; Mozart’s Requiem in Romeo Castellucci’s staged production for Gran Teatre del Liceu; Fiordiligi (Mozart’s Così fan tutte) with the Montréal Symphony Orchestra; and a new opera, Lash, by Rebecca Saunders at
the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
On the concert platform, Anna performs Handel’s Messiah with the Orchestra Sinfonica Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; and Rufus Wainwright’s Dream Requiem with the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya. She also appears as a 24/25 season Spotlight Artist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and tours her projects Ophelia with Eric Schneider and Paradise Lost with Julius Drake across Europe.
Recent concert appearances include Debussy’s La damoiselle élue with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra cond. François -Xavier Roth, Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments with Isabelle Faust at the Musikverein Wien, Wolf’s Mörike Lieder with Christian Gerhaher at the Wigmore Hall and Bayerische Staatsoper, Das Paradies und die Peri with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Rattle, St John Passion with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the Lulu Suite with the Hallé Orchestra, Steffani’s La Lotta with the Bach Consort Wien, Les Illuminations with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Kammerakademie Potsdam & Camerata Bern, Exil for the Salzburg Festival, Strauss’s Brentano Lieder with the Concertgebouw Orchestra cond. Iván Fischer, Handel duets with Bejun Mehta and Lautten Compagney for
the Handel Festspiele & Staatstheater Wiesbaden and her ‘Ophelia’ programme for the Dresdner Musikfestspiele.
Recent touring projects have include d Mozart arias with Ensemble Resonanz, ‘Serpent and Fire’ with il Giardino Armonico, her ‘Endor’ programme with Nicholas Altstadt and Francesco Cort i as part of the Babylon Trio and ‘Maria Mater Meretix’ with Ensemble Resonanz and Patricia Kopatchinskaja.
Anna’s extraordinary diversity as a performer sees her excel as an early music specialist as well as being in high demand as an interpreter of contemporary music. Collaborations have included Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus, the Academy of A ncient Music and Arcangelo with Jonathan Cohen, Les Violons du Roy and Bernard Labadie, Freiburg Barockorchester with Andrea Marcon & Lawrence Cummings, Akademie für Alte Musik
Berlin and René Jacobs and Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini. Roles c reated for Anna include Inanna in Jörg Widmann’s Babylon, world premiered at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Rihm’s Mnemosyne and Requiem Strophen with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Samothrake with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Giacomo Manzoni’s Il Rumore del Tempo with Maurzio Pollini.
Anna’s various recordings and music videos made her the subject of a documentary feature “The Fabulous World of Anna Prohaska” dir. Andreas Morell in 2013. She has ventured into narrative cinema in “The Casanova Variations” dir. Michael Sturminger alongsid e John Malkovich. Recordings include Rufus Wainwright’s setting of the Shakespeare sonnets with the BBC Symphony Orchestra ‘Take all my Loves’ for Deutsche Grammophon, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Entführung with Yannick Nézet -Séguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Berg’s Lulu Suite with Vienna Philharmonic, Bach Cantatas with Collegium 1704 and Václav Luks and Mozart’s Requiem with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado. Her first solo album, ‘Sirène’, was released in 2011 on the Deutsche Grammophon label, followed by ‘Enchanted Forest’ in 2013 and ‘Behind the Lines’ in 2014. Recent albums include chart-topping ‘Serp ent & Fire’ with Il Giardino Armonico, ‘Paradise Lost’ with Julius Drake, ‘Bach: Redemption’ with Lautten Compagney and ‘ Celebration of Life in Death’ with La Folia Barockorchester for Alpha Classics, and ‘György Kurtág: Kafka -Fragmente’ with Isabelle Faust for Harmonia Mundi. Last season also saw the release of her latest album ‘Maria Mater Meretrix’ with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Camerata Bern for Alpha Classics.
Anna studied interpretation, piano and music theory with Eberhard Kloke before attending the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Kunstpreis from the Academy of Arts Berlin & the 2023 Gabriel Dussurget Prize in the 75th anniversary of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.