Mezzo soprano Lioba Braun began her artistic career as local cantor at the cathedral in Würzburg – the city in which she grew up and where she completed her studies as a church musician. Her international career took quite a spectacular turn in 1994, when she stepped in at short notice to sing Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. Subsequently she was invited to sing this and other Wagner roles (Kundry/Parsifal, Ortrud/Lohengrin, Fricka and Götterdämmerung-Waltraute/Ring, Venus/Tannhäuser, recently also Isolde/Tristan, e.g. with Andris Nelsons in Birmingham and Paris) at the Bayreuth Festival and also at Europe’s major opera houses, such as the Scala in Milan, Teatro Real in Madrid, the Liceu in Barcelona and the state operas of Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Vienna, as well as in Zurich, Rome, Los Angeles and many other internationally renowned companies.

 

Besides Wagner and Verdi (Eboli, Azucena) she has performed opera roles by Bartok (Judith/Bluebeard) and Strauss (Amme/Frau ohne Schatten, Herodias/Salome, Klytämnestra/Elektra) as well as the great solo parts of Mahler’s symphonies and works of Berg, Brahms and Beethoven (e.g. at the Wiener Musikverein, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Salzburger Festspiele, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, and for the Pope in Rome) under the baton of such famous conductors as Christian Thielemann, Mariss Jansons, Andris Nelsons, Zubin Metha, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Claudio Abbado, Christoph Eschenbach, Lorin Maazel, Myung-Whun Chung, Kent Nagano, Jesús López Cobos, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Sir Simon Rattle and Riccardo Muti, to name but a few.

 

Her cooperation with highly renowned orchestras includes the Berlin Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the West-Eastern-Diwan-Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

 

Besides her ongoing creative career Lioba Braun has also been appointed Professor for voice at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne in 2010.

 

Lioba Braun has made several CD recordings, among them “Lioba Braun singt Wagner” (Sony 2005) conducted by Peter Schneider, Mozart’s Requiem conducted by Christian Thielemann (Deutsche Grammophon 2006), Mahler’s 2nd and 8th Symphonies conducted by Jonathan Nott (Tudor 2009/2011); as well as the Altrhapsodie by Brahms with Helmuth Rilling (Hännsler 2006). Her most recent release was the recording of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Elias under Hans-Christoph Rademann, with Marlis Petersen, Maximilian Schmitt, Thomas Oliemans, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin in 2016.