The Dutch contralto Helena Rasker has made an international name for herself at both opera houses and concert venues: she is equally compelling in Baroque operas, psychologically complex 20th-century works and the creations of today’s most innovative composers.
In the 2025/26 season, prior to her return to the Salzburg Festival as Maddalena (Il viaggio a Reims), Helena Rasker made her debut at the Theater an der Wien as the Ugly Duchess and the Owl in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland and her role debut as Madame de Croissy in a new production of Dialogues des Carmélites at the Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine; she also reprised her role as Four in Philip Venables’s acclaimed opera We Are the Lucky Ones at the Ruhrtriennale — a role that she will perform again in July 2026 at the Tyrolean Festival Erl. On the concert stage she sang Auntie in a performance of Peter Grimes with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with La Sfera Armoniosa at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
Her engagements in the 2024/25 season included her role debut as Mescalina in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and Auntie in a new production of Peter Grimes and Four in the world premiere of We Are the Lucky Ones at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. Her longstanding collaboration with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra continued with performances as Irene in Handel’s Tamerlano in Valencia, Madrid, Oviedo and Berlin.
Helena Rasker’s recent opera engagements have also included Zita (Gianni Schicchi) and the Abbess (Suor Angelica) in Barrie Kosky’s production of Puccini’s Il trittico at the Dutch National Opera, Andronico in Vivaldi’s Il Giustino at the Berlin State Opera, Grandmother, Old Woman and Finnish Woman in Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, and Orfeo (Orfeo ed Euridice) at the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.
In 2022 she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Orff’s De temporum fine comoedia, returning in 2023 for Martinů’s The Greek Passion.
