About this Artist
A winner of numerous competitons, soprano CAROLINE STEIN started her musical education with lessons in piano and classical ballet and then studied with Claudio Nicolai at the Conservatory in Cologne from 1983 till 1988.
The young soprano declined a scholarship at the University of Bloomington in favor of a first engagement at the Würzburg Theatre. She joined the ensemble of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden in 1989, and in 1990 made her debut as the Queen of the Night at the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin and subsequently toured Japan. An ensemble member of the Staatsoper Hannover from 1991 till 1999, she was nominated as Singer of the Year 1989 by the magazine Opernwelt for her double part in the German premiere of Ligeti's Le grand macabre.
Guest engagements have included Blonde in The Abduction from the Seraglio at the Quebec Opera (1991), the Queen of the Night in a new production of The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (1992), several Harry Kupfer productions at the Komische Oper Berlin, including The Magic Flute, The Abduction from the Seraglio, and Henze's König Hirsch, among others. She has also performed at the Leipzig Opera, the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden, the Nationaltheater Mannheim, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (with Esa-Pekka Salonen and Peter Sellars), and the Bayreuth Festival.
In 2000, Stein made her debut at the Proms concerts under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle and performed Mozart's Mass in C minor and Alban Berg's Altenberg Lieder with the Bochum Symphonic Orchestra. Her engagements with Claudio Abbado have included Parsifal in Berlin, Salzburg, Lucerne, and Edinburgh, as well as Margarethe in Schumann's Faust-Scenes in Salzburg. In November 2002 she performed and recorded Ligeti's Requiem with Jonathan Nott and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2003 she was seen in Medeamaterial by Pascal Dusapin in Lausanne and in Götterdämmerung at Bayreuth; at the Berlin Staatsoper in 2004 she sang in Henze's Elegie für junge Liebende. That same year she sang Venus/Gepopo in Ligeti's Le grand macabre for San Francisco Opera. 2005 included performances in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio (Konstanze) and The Magic Flute and the role of Violetta in La traviata. Her 2006 engagements include the Berlin Staatsoper, Lyon, Paris, Madrid, and the Edinburgh Festival.