|
The German mezzo-soprano/contralto, Judith Braun, completed first a commercial traineeship. She then studied opera and music education at the Hochschule für Musik des Saarlandes, where she graduated in 2002. As a student, she attended the Richard Wagner Scholarship programme at the Bayreuth Festival in 1998, and also attended masterclasses with Kai Wessel at the Telemann-Akademie in Magdeburg. She made her first guest appearances at the Theatre Kaiserslautern and was a member oft he Opera Workshop in Wiesbaden from 2001 to 2002. In 2006, she was a finalist at the 5th Concorso Vocale Internationale di Musica Sacra in Rome, Italy.
Judith Braun's professional operatic career started with guest engagements at the Theatre Lüneburg and at the State Opera Houses of Karlsruhe and Saarbrücken. Commencing with the 2009-2010 season, she has been an ensemble member oft he Saarland State Opera House where she started as a lyric mezzo-soprano. Still singing parts as Hänsel in Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, Charlotte in Massenet's Werther and Mrs. Quickly in Verdi'\s Falstaff, her current roles include Ježibaba in Dvořák's Rusalka and Kabanicha in Janáček's Katya Kabanova, enlarging her repertoire towards the dramatic fach. With Herodias in R. Strauss' Salome and Fricka in R. Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung this direction will be continued during future seasons. At the Saarland State Opera House she has collaborated with conductors such as Constantin Trinks, Konrad Junghänel, Toshiyuki Kamioka, Nicholas Milton, Erwin Ortner, Sébastian Rouland and Howard Arman. Recently she was awarded the Saarbrücken Opera House Sponsor Club Prize for 2017.
Also a distinguished singer for concerto an sacred repertoire, Judith Braun has sung, among others, the contralto parts in Verdi`s Requiem and in the Christmas-Oratorio (BWV 248) by J.S. Bach. Together with the Ensemble Parlando (Director: Rainer Oster), she recorded for Saarländischer Rundfunk two cantatas by J.S. Bach (2007). |
