The contralto Freya Apffelstaedt was born in South Africa and studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich with Lars Woldt and Daniela Sindram. In addition, she participated in masterclasses with Brigitte Fassbaender, Sibylla Rubens, Malcolm Martineau and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. In summer 2021, after graduating from her master’s degree, she was a member of the Young Singers Project at the Salzburg Festival. She went on to spend two seasons as a member of the International Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera House, where her appearances included Grimgerde in Wagner’s Die Walküre, Amastre in Handel’s Serse and Soeur Mathilde in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
During her studies she appeared in several opera productions, sang Hippolyta in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Munich Radio Orchestra at the Prinzregententheater and performed in the music theatre piece liminal space, which received its world premiere in a collaboration between the ensemble oktopus and the Munich Biennale.
In the 2023/24 season she has sung First Norn in the new production of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung at the Zurich Opera House, made her role debut as Erda in the new production of Siegfried at the Bühnen Bern and sung St Catherine in a semi-staged performance of Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher at Theater Bielefeld. In summer 2024 she returns to the Salzburg Festival for Luigi Nono’s Il canto sospeso.
Freya Apffelstaedt appears regularly on the concert platform. She has a longstanding collaboration with Franz Hauk and the ensemble Concerto de Bassus, with whom she has sung the alto solos in compositions that include various of Bach’s cantatas, his Ascension Oratorio and Duruflé’s Requiem, and recorded works by Giovanni Simone Mayr such as the Messa solenne and Messa di Gloria.
Freya Apffelstaedt is a prize-winner of several national and international competitions, was a finalist in the 2023 Tenor Viñas Competition in Barcelona and has received scholarships from the German State and from the Richard Wagner Society of Bayreuth.
