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.

Magdalena Anna Hofmann makes her role debut as Marie in a new production of Wozzeck at the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp and Ghent in the 2024/25 season. Other performances in 2024/25 include a new production of Tristan und Isolde at the Darmstadt State Opera in which she reprises her signature role of Isolde as well as several concerts at the Müpa Budapest.

In the 2023/24 season, Magdalena Anna Hofmann took part in the Season Inauguration Gala of the Semperoper Dresden, where she also appeared as Giulietta in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Other engagements included Brünnhilde in Siegfried at the Budapest Wagner Days, The Foreign Princess in Rusalka at the Ópera de Tenerife, a new staging of the Schönberg evening Freitag, der 13. for Theater an der Wien, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten at the Konzerthaus Wien and the Festspielhaus Bregenz as well as the Opera Meets Nature Gala at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden. At the Staatstheater Saarbrücken, Magdalena made her role debut as Giorgetta in a new production of Il tabarro and returned to the role of Brünnhilde in Die Walküre.

Magdalena Anna Hofmann made her role debut as Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at the Landestheater Salzburg in the 2022/23 season. She also made her role debut as Brünnhilde in Siegfried at the Budapest Wagner Days, returned to the Semperoper Dresden as The Foreign Princess in Rusalka, a role she also performed in a new production at the Staatstheater Hannover and sang Isolde in Tristan und Isolde at prestigious May Festival at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.

Other recent performances include her house debuts at the Semperoper Dresden as Sarai in the world premiere of Torsten Rasch’s Die andere Frau, at the Oper Köln as Brünnhilde in an abridged version of Götterdämmerung and at the Staatsoper Hannover as Isolde, her double debut as Leonore in Fidelio and at the Teatro Comunale of Bologna, her role debut as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre in a new staging at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Sieglinde in Die Walküre with the Cracow Philharmonic and in Tianjin (China), Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang and Weill’s Silbersee-Gesänge with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Kundry in Mondparsifal Beta 9–23 at the Berliner Festspiele, the title role of Jenö Hubay’s Anna Karenina in a new production at the Bern Opera, Schönberg’s Gurrelieder at the Casa da Música in Porto as well as Sieglinde at the Tiroler Festspiele in Erl.

Highlights of the past few years have also led her to the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen as Frau in Schönberg’s Erwartung and as Senta in Der fliegende Holländer, to the Wiener Festwochen as Kundry in the world premiere of Mondparsifal alpha 1–8, to the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Birmingham Symphony Hall and to Bern with Erwartung, to the Aalto-Theater of Essen and to the Bonn Opera as Senta, to the Aalto-Theater as Senta and The Foreign Princess, to the Cesis Concert Hall in Latvia for her first Elsa in Lohengrin and to the Casa da Música in Porto for Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder and Isoldes Liebestod. At the Opéra de Lyon, Magdalena Anna Hofmann took part in several new productions, such as Erwartung and Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, 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 her highly acclaimed first Kundry in a new production of Parsifal at the Rahvusooper of Tallinn.

Magdalena Anna Hofmann was born in Warsaw and completed her formal vocal training in Vienna. She began her career as a mezzo-soprano, appearing at opera houses and festivals such as the Teatro alla Scala, the Theater an der Wien and the Bregenz Festival.

She has worked with conductors such as 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 Perez, Kirill Petrenko, Patrick Summers, Constantin Trinks, Simone Young and stage directors such as David Bösch, Stéphane Braunschweig, Valentina Carrasco, Frank Castorf, Lotte de Beer, William Friedkin, John Fulljames, Gerd Heinz, Keith Warner, Àlex Olle (La Fura dels Baus), Nicola Raab, Daniel Slater, Peter Stein and Walter Sutcliffe.

September 2024