Tanja Ariane Baumgartner is one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of our time.
In the 2025/26 season she sang Herodias in concert performances of Salome with the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Bucharest and Cologne, and appeared as Kundry (Parsifal) at the San Francisco Opera, as Herodias at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and as Ortrud (Lohengrin) under Joana Mallwitz in Baden-Baden.
She also sang the alto solo in Das Lied von der Erde at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Brangäne in a concert performance of Tristan und Isolde with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Jaap van Zweden in Montpellier.
Highlights of recent seasons have included Ortrud, Fricka (Der Ring des Nibelungen), Brangäne and Nurse (Die Frau ohne Schatten) at the Vienna State Opera; Mrs Quickly (Falstaff), the Mother (Il prigioniero), Klytämnestra (Elektra), Charlotte (Die Soldaten) and Countess Geschwitz (Lulu) at the Salzburg Festival; Lisa in Weinberg’s Die Passagierin, Mary (Der fliegende Holländer) and Clairon (Capriccio) at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich; Brangäne and Eleonore in the world premiere of Glanert’s Die Jüdin von Toledo at the Semperoper Dresden; Kundry at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Spring Festival in Tokyo; Venus (Tannhäuser) at the Hamburg State Opera and the Zurich Opera House; Brangäne at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; the title role of Carmen at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden; Judith (Bluebeard’s Castle) at the Edinburgh International Festival; Agave (The Bassarids) at the Komische Oper Berlin and the Salzburg Festival; Kostelnička (Jenůfa) in Santiago de Chile and The Woman in Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Ingo Metzmacher.
From 2009 to 2020 she was a member of the ensemble of the Frankfurt Opera, where she appeared in roles including the title role of Schoeck’s Penthesilea, Nurse, Eboli (Don Carlos), Azucena (Il trovatore), Principessa di Bouillon (Adriana Lecouvreur), Clairon, Gaea (Daphne), Preziosilla (La forza del destino), Foreign Princess (Rusalka), Brangäne, Cornelia (Giulio Cesare), Gora in Reimann’s Medea, Jocaste in Enescu’s Œdipe and Charlotte (Werther).
In concert she has sung in Das Lied von der Erde at the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus, in Munich and in Hamburg; in Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra; in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Sebastian Weigle in Tokyo and Paris and under Mallwitz at the Berlin Konzerthaus; in Verdi’s Requiem under Thomas Guggeis in Frankfurt; and in Glanert’s Prague Symphony with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
Tanja Ariane Baumgartner is a professor at the Basel Academy of Music.
