Sarah Wegener

Sarah Wegener sings fabulously; one understands every word, she masters the highly dramatic outbursts just as naturally as the intimate, almost spoken word. [...] of unearthly, dreamlike beauty. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Egbert Tholl, 13 November 2022

Sarah Wegener approaches every role with captivating intensity. She has enthralled listeners with the warmth and richness of her voice in performances such as Strauss’ orchestral songs under Mariss Jansons and Vladimir Jurowski in Munich, London, and Hamburg, Strauss’ Four Last Songs under Daniel Harding, Mahler’s 8th Symphony under Kirill Petrenko, Vasily Petrenko, James Conlon, Eliahu Inbal, and Kent Nagano. Her “marvellously radiant voice, as powerful as it is rich in colour” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) distinguishes her as a lieder singer of the highest order, as illustrated on her highly praised CDs Into the Deepest Sea and Zueignung. A highlight of the past season was her successful role debut as Sieglinde; she appeared in concert performances of Wagner’s Walküre with the Dresden Festi-al Orchestra and Concerto Köln under the direction of Kent Nagano in Prague, Amsterdam, Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden and Lucerne.

Strauss, Mahler and Wagner will also take centre stage for Sarah Wegener in the 2024/25 season: she returns to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Four Last Songs, which she will perform under Domingo Hindoyan. A semi-staged performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 will take her to the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner, and she can be heard again as Sieglinde in Act 1 of Die Walküre with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Petr Popelka in Trieste as well as with the Orquesta de Valencia and Alexander Liebreich. She will also perform Dvořák’s Stabat Mater with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and sing Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, again in Valencia. She will also give recitals at the Oxford International Song Festival and the Cologne Philharmonie.

Highly regarded as a performer of both classical and Romantic repertoire as well as contemporary compositions, Sarah Wegener recently sang Sibelius’ Luonnotar (Andris Nelsons, Gewandhausorchester), Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri (Jérémie Rhorer, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie), Penderecki’s St Luke Passion (Orchestre symphonique de Montéal, Kent Nagano), Bernstein’s Kaddish (MDR-Sinfonieorchester, Dennis Russel Davies), as well as Schönberg’s Six Orchestral Songs (Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Emilio Pomàrico). She performed her programme “War and Peace”, spun around works by Handel and Purcell, with the ensemble il capriccio at the Schwetzingen SWR Festival, among others. She has given the premiere of numerous works by Georg Friedrich Haas, including the opera Bluthaus. In 2021 she gave her debut as Freia in Wagner’s Rheingold in Cologne and Amsterdam with Concerto Köln and Kent Nagano.

She has also given concerts and recitals at the Salzburg Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Festival de Lanaudière, the Chigiana International Festival, the Handel Festival in Halle, the Suntory Hall, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Konzerthaus and Philharmonie Berlin, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Festival Hall London. Opera engagements have taken her to the Royal Opera House, London, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Wiener Festwochen, and the Tongyeong Festival in South Korea. 

Sarah Wegener’s discography includes recordings of Boesmans’ Trakl Lieder, Korngold’s Die stumme Serenade, Mozart’s Mass in C minor, Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle, as well as works by György Kurtág, Elliott Carter, and by and with Heinz Holliger. At the OPUS Klassik 2019 she was nominated as Singer of the Year for Jörg Widmann’s work, Labyrinth III, the solo part of which the composer wrote for her. Her second Lied CD with Götz Payer, with focus on Richard Strauss, was again on the list of nominations at the OPUS Klassik 2022. A recording of songs arranged by B. A. Zimmermann with the WDR Symphony Orchestra has recently been released at WERGO and awarded the Choc de Classica, Diapason d’OR as well as the German Record Critics’ Prize. Her recording of Hans Werner Henze’s oratorio The Raft of the Medusa with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra under Cornelius Meister was released in September 2023.

Following her double bass studies, the British-German soprano studied singing with Prof. Jaeger-Böhm in Stuttgart and took part in masterclasses with Dame Gwyneth Jones and Renée Morloc. Sarah Wegener will be teaching singing at the Zurich University of the Arts from autumn semester 2024.

Updated September 2024