About
The American mezzo-soprano has performed at renowned opera houses and festivals in Washington DC, Brussels, Geneva, Venice, Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Dresden, Aix-en-Provence, and Bregenz.
Photo: Alicia Kassebohm
Known for her compelling characterizations of both leading and supporting operatic heroines, mezzo soprano Fredrika Brillembourg combines expert vocalism with a unique stage presence and passionate acting skills. As the Narrator in the US premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s The Raven she was “vocally plush and dramatically courageous”, (Anthony Tomassini, NY Times), “tireless and astonishingly lithe while singing the impossible solos with sensuality and abiding beauty,” (Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times). Ms Brillembourg is at home in classical operatic roles as well as in contemporary music. Last season she made her house debut at the Berlin Staatsoper unter den Linden in a world premiere, (Oscar Strasnoy, Robinson) as well as returned to The Bregenz Festival
(Giordano, Siberia) and reprised the role of The Narrator in Hosokawa’s The Raven at Festival Internaçional de
Música de Canarias.
The American mezzo-soprano has appeared at major opera houses including the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie Brussels, De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam, the Grand Theatre de Genève, the Opéra National de Lyon, the Washington National Opera, the Seattle Opera, the Teatro la Fenice Venice, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos Lisbon and the Oper Frankfurt; as well as at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and at the Bregenz Festival. She has performed with prestigious orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The American Symphony Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra singing under the baton of conductors such as: Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Ingo Metzmacher, Daniel Harding, Kazushi Ono, Mark Albrecht, Manfred Honeck, Kent Nagano and Placido Domingo
As a member of the ensemble at the Theater Bremen from 1995-2001 she sang all the main roles from the mezzo repertoire including: Carmen, Charlotte, Marguerite, Brangaene, Adalgisa and Orphée. She was the first singer in the history of the Bremen Theatre to win both the Kurt Hübner Prize and the Bremen Volksbühne Prize. She interpreted the role of Jitsuko Hondo in both the world premiere and Japanese premiere of Toshio Hosokawa's opera Hanjo. (Festival Aix en Provence, La Monnaie Brussels and
Suntory Hall) Other career highlights include performing at the Komische Oper Berlin (Candide, Le Grand Macabre, Hansel and Gretel), the Bergen International Festival (Tan Dun’s Marco Polo), the Cincinnati Opera (Der Rosenkavalier), the Staatsoper Stuttgart (Madama Butterfly, Faust, Aida), the Semperoper Dresden (Rigoletto, Falstaff), the Zurich Opera House (La Sonnambula) and the Bregenz Festival (Umberto Giordano’s Siberia, Andrea Chenier). More recent debuts were at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam (Ottorino Respighi’s Il Tramonto), the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Charles Gounod’s Faust), and the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Principessa di Bouillon in Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur).
Fredrika Brillembourg has collaborated with prominent stage directors such as Christof Loy, Willy Decker, Robert Carson, Barrie Kosky, Stephen Wadsworth, Vasily Barkhatov, Martin Kušej, Keith Warner, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Jonathan Miller.
Fredrika’s discography includes: Suzuki (Madama Butterfly, Naxos); in solo arias with the Berlin Symphony, Stravinsky Les Noces, (cond. Sylvain Cambreling), En Hommage, Józef Kofler (Piano, Christoph Slowinski) and The Verdi Requiem (cond. Placido Domingo), and on DVD: as Enrichetta di Francia in Bellini’s I Puritani, a Francisco Negrin production from De Nederlandse Opera, conducted by Giuliano Carella and as Nikona in Giordano’s Siberia from the Vasiliy Barkhatov production at the 2022 Bregenz Festival, conducted by Valentin Uryupin.
Alongside her opera and concert work Brillembourg wrote, produced, arranged, and performed a one-woman show, One Touch of Genius, featuring songs from Broadway musicals by Leonard Bernstein and Kurt Weill originally presented at the Komische Oper Berlin Bernstein 100 Festival. During the pandemic, inspired by her desire to contribute to the future of classical music and opera in the 21st Century, she was a member of the 2022 cohort of the Global Leaders Institute, an executive MBA program for arts innovators. At present she is developing an opera project based on the life of a woman war journalist and will be returning to the Semperoper Dresden for a new production of Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence in 2024-25 season.
© Fredrika Brillembourg 2022