Katharina Ruckgaber

Munich-born soprano Katharina Ruckgaber will appear during the 2026/27 season with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble under Thomas Hengelbrock as Gretchen in Schumann’s *Faust Scenes* at the Elbphilharmonie and the Philharmonie Luxembourg, among other engagements. Prior to that, she will return to the Stadttheater Klagenfurt as Anna Reich in a new production. Other concert engagements include Wolf’s *Italienisches Liederbuch* with Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall in London and multiple appearances at the Oxford International Song Festival. This season, she will perform in an opera gala at the Berlin Philharmonie and make her debut at the Isarphilharmonie in Munich. During the 2025–26 season, she was acclaimed at the 2026 Handel Festival in Halle for the title role of *Talestri* under Attilio Cremonesi; at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Ghent and Antwerp, she enjoyed great success in the new production of *Don Giovanni* under Francesco Corti. Her portrayal of Ännchen in Weber’s *Der Freischütz*, directed by Philipp Stölzl at the Bregenz Festival in 2024 and 2025, was honored with a nomination for the 2025 Austrian Music Theater Award.

New Year’s concerts featuring excerpts from Viennese operettas in Thessaloniki in early 2025 were followed by an invitation for the current season to perform Luciano Berio’s *Sequenza III* in concert and to participate in a CD recording of Kreisler’s *Sissy*. During the 2024–25 season, Katharina Ruckgaber enjoyed great success as Beppi in Gerd Kühr’s opera *Stallerhof* at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt. Immediately afterward, she made her Canadian debut with New Year’s operetta concerts, followed by a last-minute replacement role as Musetta (*La Bohème*) at the Komische Oper Berlin. The soprano made numerous house debuts in the role of Asteria in Handel’s *Tamerlano*, under the direction of René Jacobs, at the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, and the Berlin Philharmonie. Recent highlights include her engagements as Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) at the National Theater in Mannheim, as Bellezza in Handel’s *Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno* at the ClassicAnd Festival in Andorra, and her debut as Galatea in *Acis and Galatea* with the Kammerakademie Potsdam. Other notable concert appearances have taken her to the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Bilbao to perform with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra.

Katharina Ruckgaber made guest appearances at the Zurich Opera in Mark Anthony Turnage’s *Coraline*, at the Theater an der Wien, at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, and at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich. Her active concert career has taken her, among other places, to Paris with the Orchestre National de France, to the MDR Symphony Orchestra, to the Konzerthaus Berlin under Iván Fischer, to the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, to the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, to Moscow, to the Cologne Philharmonic, and repeatedly to the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg —most recently in 2022 as Ännchen in René Jacobs’ acclaimed *Der Freischütz* tour with the Freiburger Barockorchester.

Immediately after graduating, she was engaged by the Opera Studio at Oper Frankfurt and subsequently served as a member of the ensemble at Theater Freiburg until 2023, where she appeared in numerous leading roles in her repertoire, including Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), the Clever Little Fox (Das schlaue Füchslein), Musetta (La Bohème), and Nanetta (Falstaff). Her interpretation of Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande) was hailed by the press as the “highlight of the season” (nmz/Der neue Merker, July 2019). As a passionate art-song singer, the multi-award-winning soprano collaborates closely with pianists Helmut Deutsch, Sholto Kynoch, Daniel Heide, and Jan Philip Schulze. On her album *LOVE AND LET DIE*, she showcases her versatility, ranging from Schubert to Berio. Recital appearances have taken her to the Konzerthaus Wien, the Frankfurt Opera, Zurich, Bayreuth, Budapest, Madrid, and Barcelona, as well as to the Oxford Lieder Festival and Wigmore Hall in London. She completed her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. She is a scholarship recipient of the German Stage Association, the Jütting Foundation in Stendal, and the Richard Wagner Association, and a prize winner of the 2017 Anneliese Rothenberger Competition.