Elīna Garanča was born into a family of musicians in Riga. She began her career at the Meiningen State Theatre, and then joined the ensembles of Frankfurt Opera and Vienna State Opera, where she appeared in many principal roles. Since then she has established a reputation as one of the most sought-after and successful singers in the classical music profession, and has performed at the most important opera houses and with the foremost orchestras in the world.
Since 2005 Elīna Garanča has been an exclusive artist with Deutsche Grammophon. Her most recent releases are her first Lieder Album, featuring Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben and a selection of Brahms songs, followed by the album Live from Salzburg, released in December 2021, which covers two unique events from the Salzburg Festivals of summer 2020 and 2021, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann.
In the 2019/20 season, she performed Dalila in a new production of Samson et Dalila at the Berlin State Opera under Daniel Barenboim, returned to the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Marguerite in La Damnation de Faust and made her long-awaited role debut as Kundry in Wagner’s Parsifal at the Vienna State Opera under Philippe Jordan. Recent highlights also include her role debut as Princess Eboli (Don Carlos) at the Paris Opéra, performances as Dalila for Vienna State Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, a new production of La Favorite at the Bavarian State Opera, which was recorded on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon, and a worldwide cinema screening of the Metropolitan Opera production of Der Rosenkavalier, starring Elīna Garanča as Octavian. In the 2021/22 season, she sang the Principessa di Bouillon in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur for the first time, with Vienna State Opera.
Elīna Garanča has won numerous awards, including the Musical America Award for Singer of the Year in 2010 and the MIDEM Classical Award in 2007, the ECHO Klassik (several times) and, in 2020, the OPUS KLASSIK for her album Sol y Vida.
In 2013 she became one of the youngest holders of the title Kammersängerin of the Vienna State Opera, where since her house debut in 2003 she has sung more than 160 performances in 18 roles.
