Biography – Katrin Küsswetter
Katrin Küsswetter is a German coloratura soprano of the highest calibre.
Encompassing all the leading roles and major works of her genre from the lyric to the dramatic, her repertoire is as virtuosic as it is eclectic.
From the early baroque period to the contemporary, her mastery of sacred and secular works is unequivocal.
Katrin performs at top international music festivals in Germany and Austria, (the Bayreuth Festival, the European Music Festival Stuttgart, the Bachwoche Ansbach, the Tage für Alte Musik, Innsbruck).
She has played Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Konstanze in W.A. Mozart´s Abduction, from the Seraglio, Queen of the Night in Mozart´s The Magic Flute, Olympia in Offenbach´s The Tales of Hoffmann, and Cunigonde in Bernstein´s Candide.
She is also revered for her expansive, virtuosic repertoire of sacred music, which includes all of Bach’s major works and solo cantatas, Mozart’s Requiem, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater, for example.
Under the baton of internationally-renowned conductors such as Helmut Rilling, René Jacobs, Lars U. Mortensen, Hartmut Keil, Christoph U. Meyer and Sebastian Weigle, she collaborates frequently with major orchestras (Bamberg Symphony Orchestra), and with well-known period instrument ensembles ( La Banda, Augsburg, and La Ciaccona, Munich).
Numerous live-streamed performances, television and radio broadcasts to date have documented her unequalled virtuosity and versatility. She is particularly well-known for her performances of Mozart’s concert arias, which she sang to such resounding aplomb at the Rieser Kultur Tage in April 2018, that her subsequent CD release of the same in 2019 was practically a must. Encouraged by a scholarship of the international Deutsche Musikrat she released the first entire recording of Giuseppe Giordani´s Otto Arie Sacre worldwide in 2022.
With a wealth of professional and artistic experience under her belt, Katrin is not shy of testing and overcoming artistic boundaries. In addition to her collaborations with renowned conductors and arrangers, she is also highly-respected for her production work, which is both rooted in tradition and refreshingly unconventional. She has been entrusted with the world-premiere staging of the works of several acclaimed composers which are celebrated by critics and audiences alike.
Katrin Küsswetter began her singing career primarily focussing on baroque music. She also took masterclasses with Richard Whistreich, Jessica Cash, Ingrid Figur, Anna Reynolds and Klesie Kelley-Moog. Quite early on in her career, she expanded her repertoire under the guidance of the renowned Birgit Ströbel-König (Nuremberg) and KS Claes-Håkan Ahnsjö (Munich and Stockholm). Entrusted with this important artistic and pedagogic legacy, Katrin is both conscious of, and passionate about her teaching vocation. She teaches singers at various institutes and also gives workshops and masterclasses. She is a member of the Bund Deutscher Gesangspädagogen (the German federal association of vocal teachers) and the Deutscher Tonkünstlerverband (German musician’s association).