Robin Johannsen

A native of Philadelphia, the soprano Robin Johannsen studied at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Cincinnati. In 2002 she came to the Deutsche Oper Berlin on a scholarship from the American Berlin Opera Foundation, whose General Music Director at the time, Christian Thielemann, at once invited her to the Bayreuth Festival as the Young Shepherd in Tannhäuser; she also appeared there in later years as the Forest Bird in Siegfried. From 2005 to 2007, Johannsen was a member of the Leipzig Opera ensemble, where she performed such roles as Mozart’s Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), and Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail). She has been working as a freelance singer since 2008, focusing on Baroque and Classical music. She collaborates closely with René Jacobs, who engaged her to sing such roles as Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Salzburg Mozarteum and Fiordiligi for a German tour of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and, in the spring of 2022, to perform in Bach’s Mass in B minor. She has appeared in Handel’s Il trionfo del tempo at the Musikfest Bremen and in Purcell’s King Arthur at the Berlin Staatsoper, where she will also take part in a new production of Vivaldi’s Il Giustino. In the concert hall, Robin Johannsen has performed with the Vienna Philharmonic under Philippe Jordan in Bach’s Magnificat; she debuted with the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia under Manfred Honeck in Haydn’s Creation and has performed the Brahms Requiem with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the Mozarteum Orchestra. Last but not least, she regularly performs with such celebrated early music ensembles as the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, The English Concert, La Folia Barockorchester, B’Rock, and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. She has appeared on more than a dozen CDs; her most recent recording is of Bach’s Mass in B minor with René Jacobs, which was released in March 2022.

Lucerne Festival debut on 14 and 15 September 2008 as Konstanze in a staged production of Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail with the Freiburger Barockorchester under Attilio Cremonesi.

July  2022