Ilse Eerens

Belgian soprano Ilse Eerens appears regularly in leading opera houses and concert halls all over the world.

Among her engagements have been Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the Cappella Mediterranea under Leonardo García Alarcón, cantatas by Bach and his St Matthew Passion with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir under Ton Koopman at the Leipzig Bach Festival, Celia (Lucio Silla) with the Insula Orchestra under Laurence Equilbey at the Festival de Beaune, Matilde in Rossini’s Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra at the Theater an der Wien, the title role in Toshio Hosokawa’s Matsukaze at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, Héro in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, Haitang in Zemlinsky’s Der Kreidekreis, the Virgin Mary in Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher and the title role in The Cunning Little Vixen at the Opéra National de Lyon, Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Despina (Così fan tutte) and Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and the soprano soloist in Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten with Concerto Köln under Marcus Creed.

Ilse Eerens has also sung Schubert’s Mass in E flat major with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge with the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn under Dirk Kaftan, Pamina, Oscar (Un ballo in maschera), Amanda (Le Grand Macabre) and Antigone in Enescu’s Œdipe at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande) at the Klagenfurt Stadttheater, Debussy’s La Damoiselle élue with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang and St Paul and Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the MDR Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig and Marianne in HK Gruber’s Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald at the Bregenz Festival and at the Theater an der Wien. She first appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 2018, when she sang the First Lady in Die Zauberflöte and multiple roles in a concert performance of Gottfried von Einem’s Der Prozess.

Ilse Eerens’s discography includes Hosokawa’s Nach dem Sturm with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi under Jun Märkl and recordings of Dvořák’s Requiem and Stabat Mater under Philippe Herreweghe. Her recording of the Stabat Mater was named Recording of the Month by Gramophone magazine in July 2013.

Ilse Eerens has worked with many of the world’s leading conductors, including Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Hartmut Haenchen, Lorenzo Viotti, Kazushi Ōno, Peter Dijkstra, Richard Egarr, Michael Boder, Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Michael Schønwandt, Kenneth Montgomery, Jaap van Zweden, Constantinos Carydis, Frans Brüggen, Claus Peter Flor, Antonello Manacorda and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.