Elīna Garanča

The mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, who was born in Riga in 1976, completed her training at the Latvian Academy of Music. While still a student, she made her debut as Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Latvian National Opera. In 1999, she won the International Mirjam Helin Singing Competition, and two years later she emerged victorious from the BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff. Garanča has been a freelance performer since 2002 and appears on the world’s leading stages: from her home theater, the Vienna Staatsoper, to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Opéra national de Paris, and the Salzburg Festival. One of her signature roles is Dalila in Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, but she also sings the major mezzo roles of Giuseppe Verdi, Octavian in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, and Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. In 2021, she expanded her repertoire at the Vienna Staatsoper with the role of Kundry in Wagner’s Parsifal, which she also performed at the Bayreuth Festival in 2023. In the same year, she took on the role of Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser for the first time at the Salzburg Easter Festival. In the 2025-26 season, she will appear as Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana at the Bavarian Staatsoper and as Bizet’s Carmen at Zurich Opera. In the concert hall, Garanča has worked with Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Antonio Pappano, Kirill Petrenko, and Christian Thielemann. She is also devoted to lieder and released an album of Schumann and Brahms songs in 2020. Her latest release, When Night Falls, features works by composers from Schubert to Berio, and appeared in 2024. Elīna Garanča is a recipient of the Grand Music Prize of Latvia and the European Culture Prize; in 2010, she was named Singer of the Year by Musical America and at MIDEM in Cannes. She has been an Austrian Kammersängerin since 2013.

Lucerne Festival debut on 18 March 2005 in Dvorák’s Requiem, with Mariss Jansons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

June 2025