Diana Damrau

She took up the title role in Maria Stuarda at the Zürich Opera House in April 2018. In 2019 she debuted as Ophélie in Hamlet in concert performances at the Liceu in March and Deutsche Oper Berlin in June.

Damrau has furthered her exploration of the bel canto repertoire with highlights including new productions of Rossini's comic opera Le comte Ory at the Metropolitan Opera and the title role in Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix at the Liceu. She has since returned to the Metropolitan Opera as both Adina in L'elisir d'amore and Rosina in The Barber of Seville and brought her portrayal in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor to Berlin and Vienna. Following the birth of her second child in autumn 2012, Damrau returned to the stage with a new production of Verdi's Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera in February 2013; this was followed by her role debut in the title role of Verdi's La traviata in the same house. In October 2013, she sang in the world premiere of Iain Bell's A Harlot's Progress at the Theater an der Wien. In March 2014 she sang in La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera. She returned to The Marriage of Figaro at La Scala debuting as the countess with the run premiering on 26 October 2016 where she received acclaim for her legato, phrasing, and interpretation of aria "Dove sono" in act 3.

Damrau married French bass-baritone Nicolas Testé in May 2010. They have two sons.

The Queen of the Night from Mozart's The Magic Flute had been Damrau's most famous and most frequently performed role, as she had been engaged to perform it in over 15 productions at houses including the Salzburg Festival, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Oper Frankfurt and the Bavarian State Opera. Damrau made Metropolitan Opera history in the 2007/08 season by appearing as both Pamina and Queen of the Night in different performances of the same run, after which she retired the Queen character. Another notable engagement was her portrayal of all four heroines in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann in a new production at the Bavarian State Opera in October 2011. Other coloratura roles in her repertoire include Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Elvira in I puritani, Marie in La fille du régiment, and Aminta in Il re pastore. She also performs roles in the lyric soprano repertoire including the title role in Manon, Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro.

Since 2007 Damrau has had an exclusive recording contract with EMI/Virgin.

As well as performing in operas, Damrau is a regular on the concert stage. She performed alongside Plácido Domingo at the concert program "3 Orchester und Stars" in Munich to mark the opening of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. She has performed lieder at Vienna's Musikverein, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, La Scala, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, the Kissinger Sommer and both the Munich and Salzburg Festivals, especially with Xavier de Maistre as her accompanist. Her concert repertoire includes Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, Requiem and Exsultate, jubilate as well as Handel's Messiah. She has performed with conductors as James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Leonard Slatkin, Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Jesús López-Cobos.

Early recordings include Verdi's canzoni, Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and Schumann's Myrthen, Op. 25, with the Telos label and live recordings of her summer 2005 Liederabend at the Salzburg Festival and her summer 2006 Liederabend at the Schubertiade are released on the Orfeo label.

Damrau's first operatic engagements were in Würzburg and subsequently the Mannheim National Theatre and Oper Frankfurt. Since then, she has sung throughout the world at venues such as the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Royal Opera House London, the Bavarian State Opera and the Salzburg Festival. She was invited to sing the title role in Salieri's Europa riconosciuta at the re-opening of La Scala, Milan in 2004, under the baton of Riccardo Muti.

Diana Damrau (German pronunciation: [diːˈana ˈdamʁaʊ] ; born 31 May 1971) is a German soprano. She has been successful in coloratura soprano roles, especially admired as the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos. Since the early 2010s, she has gradually proceeded into 19th-century Italian bel canto repertoire, singing roles such as Violetta in La traviata and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor. Damrau is also known as a lieder singer.