In a repertory spanning most of the great Verdi, Puccini and Verismo roles, Polish soprano Barbara Dobrzanska has been celebrated by critics and audience alike for her gleaming, sumptuously coloured voice with effortless high notes and her moving interpretations.

Her 2024/25 schedule includes the title role of Tosca and her role debut as Mother in Hansel and Gretel at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe.

Important recent debuts include her house debut at Semperoper Dresden as Marta in a new production of The Passenger, where she also sang Micaela in Carmen, her debut in the title role of Turandot in Hof as well as Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth, Hanna Glawari in Die lustige Witwe and The Foreign Princess in a new production of Rusalka in Karlsruhe.

After first engagements in Hannover, Kaiserslautern and Dortmund Barbara Dobrzanska joined the ensemble of the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in 2002. There, she quickly became an audience favorite and performed many iconic soprano parts of her repertoire: the title roles in Suor Angelica, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Luisa Miller, La Gioconda, Kat’a Kabanová, Mazeppa, Rusalka, La vestale and Adriana Lecouvreur, Mimì in La bohème, Liù in Turandot, Alice Ford in Falstaff,Desdemona in Otello, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, Amalia in I Masnadieri, Amelia in Simon Boccanegra and Un ballo in maschera, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Margherita and Elena in Boito’s Mefistofele, Roxane in Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, Maddalena in Andrea Chénier, Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Antonia and Giulietta in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Tatjana inEugene Onegin, Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus and Hanna Glawari in Die lustige Witwe, to only name a few.

Apart from her engagement at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, she sang aria concerts with the Munich Symphonic Orchestra and appeared at the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm, at the Vienna Musikverein and in Rome in memory of the Pope in the soprano part of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. She also sang Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica at the Graz Opera,Madama Butterfly at Budapest’s Philharmonic Hall and at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, Leonora di Vargas in La forza del destino in Darmstadt and the title role of Norma in Krefeld and Gelsenkirchen. She also performed in Essen, Freiburg, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Regensburg, Warsaw, Krakow, Cagliari, at Liederhalle Stuttgart and at Festspielhaus Salzburg.

Barbara Dobrzanska has worked with conductors such as Leopold Hager, Jacques Delacôte, Carlo Montanaro, Pier Giorgio Morandi and Hans Wallat and shared the stage with singers like Giuseppe Giacomini, Josè Cura, Giovanna Casolla, Johan Botha, Anja Silja, Hildegard Behrens, Martha Mödl, Denyce Graves and Franz Grundheber.

August 2024

[Photos: Felix Grünschloß / Staatstheater Karlsruhe]