Biography

Acclaimed as an “intense, concentrated artist” (Opera News) with a voice of “dark beauty and lustrous tone” (Birmingham Post), Magdalena Anna Hofmann has been celebrated at many of the world’s most important opera houses, festivals, and concert halls. Her repertoire spans some of the great heroines of the German, Slavic, and Italian repertoire as well as Mozart roles, operetta, modern, and contemporary music.

In the 2025/26 season, she makes her role debut as Elektra in a new production at Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. At the Budapest Wagner Days, she reprises Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Brünnhilde in Siegfried, while in China she appears as Marie in Wozzeck at the Beijing Music Festival and the Shanghai Symphony Hall. On the concert platform, she sings Kundry in Act II of Parsifal with The Mahler Players in Inverness, Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, and gives a recital with Michael Schade and Vinzenz Praxmarer at the Horizonte Landeck Festival.

In 2024/25 she made her acclaimed role debut as Marie in Wozzeck at the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp and Ghent (“remarkable commitment and an equally striking timbre,” Diapason). That season also included a new production of Tristan und Isolde at the Darmstadt State Opera, where she was unanimously praised for her “sublime Isolde” (Frankfurter Neue Presse), and several concerts at Müpa Budapest.

Highlights of the 2023/24 season included the Season Inauguration Gala of the Semperoper Dresden, where she also appeared as Giulietta in Les Contes d’Hoffmann; Brünnhilde in Siegfried at the Budapest Wagner Days; the Foreign Princess in Rusalka at Ópera de Tenerife; Schönberg’s Freitag, der 13. at Theater an der Wien; Das Buch der hängenden Gärten at the Konzerthaus Wien and the Festspielhaus Bregenz; and the Opera Meets Nature Gala at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden. At the Staatstheater Saarbrücken she debuted as Giorgetta in Il tabarro and returned as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre.

Other recent appearances include her house debuts at the Semperoper Dresden (Sarai in the world premiere of Torsten Rasch’s Die andere Frau and the Foreign Princess in Rusalka), the Oper Köln (Brünnhilde in an abridged Götterdämmerung), and the Staatsoper Hannover (Isolde and the Foreign Princess). She has also appeared as Leonore in Fidelio at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier in Salzburg, Brünnhilde in Siegfried at the Budapest Wagner Days and in Die Walküre in Klagenfurt, Isolde at the May Festival Wiesbaden, Sieglinde with the Cracow Philharmonic and in Tianjin, Kundry in Mondparsifal Beta 9–23 at the Berliner Festspiele, and in the title role in Hubay’s Anna Karenina at Bern Opera. Concert engagements have included Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang and Weill’s Silbersee-Gesänge with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder in Porto.

Earlier seasons brought her to the Royal Danish Opera as the Woman in Erwartung and as Senta in Der fliegende Holländer; the Wiener Festwochen for Mondparsifal alpha 1–8; the Berlin Philharmonie, Birmingham Symphony Hall, and Bern with Erwartung; the Aalto-Theater Essen and Bonn Opera as Senta and the Foreign Princess; the Cēsis Concert Hall in Latvia as Elsa in Lohengrin; and the Casa da Música in Porto for Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder and Isoldes Liebestod. At the Opéra de Lyon she appeared in Schönberg’s Erwartung and Von heute auf morgen, Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna, Der fliegende Holländer (role debut as Senta), and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (Carlotta). She also sang Portia in André Tchaikovsky’s The Merchant of Venice at the Bregenz Festival and sang her acclaimed first Kundry in Parsifal at the Rahvusooper Tallinn.

Born in Warsaw, Hofmann studied voice in Vienna and began her career as a mezzo-soprano, appearing at Teatro alla Scala, Theater an der Wien, and the Bregenz Festival. She has collaborated with conductors including Michael Boder, Sylvain Cambreling, Frédéric Chaslin, Gaetano d’Espinosa, Bertrand de Billy, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Adam Fischer, Riccardo Frizza, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Harding, Hartmut Keil, Lothar Königs, Bernhard Kontarsky, Tomáš Netopil, Kazushi Ono, Alejo Pérez, Kirill Petrenko, Patrick Summers, Constantin Trinks, and Simone Young, and with directors such as David Bösch, Stéphane Braunschweig, Valentina Carrasco, Frank Castorf, Lotte de Beer, William Friedkin, John Fulljames, Gerd Heinz, Keith Warner, Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus), Nicola Raab, Daniel Slater, Peter Stein, and Walter Sutcliffe.

September 2025