Elsa Dreisig

The soprano Elsa Dreisig has French and Danish roots. A graduate of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris, she won first prize at the prestigious Operalia Competition in 2016, the same year in which she was also named Vocal Discovery at the Victoires de la musique classique and voted Young Artist of the Year by the magazine Opernwelt.

As early as 2015 she had already won the second prize in the Queen Sonja Competition in Oslo and the first prize and audience prize in the NEUE STIMMEN Competition in Gütersloh. That same year she joined the Opera Studio of the Berlin State Opera, graduating to the main ensemble in 2017. The roles she has sung there include Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Euridice (Orfeo ed Euridice) and Violetta (La traviata). She has also taken part in a series of new productions, including as Diane (Hippolyte et Aricie), Gretchen in Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust, Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Natascha in the world premiere of Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee and, in April 2021, Countess Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro). She made her Paris Opéra debut as Pamina in January 2017 and has returned there as Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), as Zerlina in a new production of Don Giovanni and as Elvira (I puritani).

She has also appeared as Musetta (La bohème) and as Massenet’s Manon at the Zurich Opera House, and as Micaëla in a new production of Carmen at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

As a concert artist Elsa Dreisig has toured Europe performing Haydn’s The Creation with the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle, in which capacity she made her Salzburg Festival debut in 2017. She also toured Europe with the London Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge and has appeared with the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Vienna and Munich Philharmonic Orchestras, the Orchestre Français des Jeunes and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Among the conductors with whom she has worked are Daniel Barenboim, Fabio Luisi, Simon Rattle, Franz Welser-Möst, Massimo Zanetti and David Zinman.

Recent highlights include Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) at the Salzburg Festival, Anna Bolena at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Countess Almaviva and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) at the Berlin State Opera and the title role of Salome at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

In the 2022/23 season Elsa Dreisig sang Juliette (Roméo et Juliette) in Paris, Donna Elvira at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia and Elisabetta (Maria Stuarda) in Geneva. She also appeared in concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg.

Elsa Dreisig records exclusively for Warner Classics / Erato. Her debut album, Miroir(s) (2018), has received numerous awards. Her second solo album, Morgen, with the pianist Jonathan Ware, appeared in 2020. Her most recent album Mozart x 3, featuring arias from Mozart’s Da Ponte operas, Idomeneo, Lucio Silla and La clemenza di Tito, was released in 2022.

Elsa Dreisig is an ambassador for Opera for Peace. In 2019 she was awarded the Danish Crown Prince Couple’s Cultural Award.