The soprano Heidi Elisabeth Meier studied concert and opera singing at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and graduated with a master’s degree. She won the Anneliese Rothenberger Singing Competition and was awarded the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize. She was voted Opera Singer of the Year by Deutschlandradio in 2010.
Since her first engagements at the Freiburg Theatre (2003) and the Nuremberg State Theatre (2006), and in her current ensemble, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (since 2012), she has sung all the major roles in her lyric coloratura repertoire, such as Romilda in Handel’s “Xerxes”, Gluck’s Euridice, the bel canto roles Lucia di Lammermoor, Elvira, Marie and Lisa by Donizetti and Bellini, Verdi’s Gilda, Nanetta and Oscar, Humperdinck’s Gretel, Frau Fluth by Otto Nicolai, the Strauss protagonists Sophie and Zerbinetta , Johann Strauss’ Adele, Offenbach’s Olympia, Angèle in Lehar’s “Graf von Luxemburg”, Martinů’s “Ariane”, Wagner’s Waldvöglein and Rheintoch’s Woglinde, the Mozart roles Sandrina, Servilia, Donna Anna, Susanna, Konstanze, Pamina and the Queen of the Night.
She has also been heard and seen in numerous (world) premieres of contemporary operas (Detlef Glanert “Das Holzschiff”, Jörn Arnecke “Ronja Räubertochter”, Marius Felix Lange “Die Schneekönigin”, Elliott Carter “What next?”, Oliver Knussen “Wo die wilden Kerle wohnen”).
Her concert activity covers the whole “classical” repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, which led to a CD production of Schönberg’s “Jakobsleiter” with the DSO under Kent Nagano and participation in the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, as well as repeated invitations with national and international orchestras such as. the Dresden Kreuzchor and the Dresden Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestras of Prague and Brno, the NDR Hannover, the Bochum, Düsseldorf and Duisburg Symphony Orchestras, to the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in the USA and to the Osaka Festival in Japan with conductors such as Edo de Vaardt, Adam Fischer, Axel Kober, Zdenĕk Mácal, Eiji Oue and Sir Neville Marriner. In the field of lied and chamber music, she works together with the Linos Ensemble and the EnsembleKONTRASTE, as well as various ensemble formations of musicians from the Düsseldorf and Duisburg Symphonies.
Since the summer semester of 2023, Ms Meier has been a lecturer in voice at the Anton Rubinstein International Music Academy and the Beethoven Conservatorium.
