ミヒャエラ・シュスター
メゾソプラノ
“My path was somewhat circuitous,” says Michaela Schuster. The mezzo-soprano, who is now at home in all major international theatres, initially studied oboe. She was offered her first orchestral engagement while still a student. When she then decided to train her voice at the Mozarteum University Salzburg, her teachers made her choose between the two, “because breathing is so different that it’s impossible to do both. My love of acting ultimately led me to become a singer”.
In Salzburg, Michaela Schuster was a member of Helena Łazarska’s class before completing her vocal training with honours at the Berlin University of the Arts under Jarmila Rudolfová-Kratzer. This was followed by masterclasses with Christa Ludwig, Aribert Reimann and Julia Hamari, before the singer won first prizes at the singing competition for Wagner voices in Bayreuth and the “Debut in Merano” competition. Her voice, says Michaela Schuster, had a dramatic quality right from the start, which is rather unusual: “You usually start with the lyrical and then slowly switch to the dramatic. In my case, it certainly helped that I started singing later than many of my colleagues, so my voice was already heavier and more mature. I was already 30 years old when I gave my first professional performance.” In 2017/18, Michaela Schuster made her acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York as Klytaemnestra in Strauss’s Elektra. Since then, she has been a regular guest at the state opera houses in Berlin and Vienna, at Covent Garden in London, and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich – with a repertoire that includes roles such as Ortrud (Lohengrin), Fricka (Rheingold and Walküre), Nurse (Die Frau ohne Schatten), The Gingerbread Witch and Gertrud (Hänsel und Gretel), Herodias (Salome) and Marie (Wozzeck). She has sung with the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko in performances of Strauss’s Elektra (Klytaemnestra) and Die Frau ohne Schatten (Nurse).
