The Austrian mezzo-soprano Michaela Selinger is as active on the opera stage as she is on the concert platform.

The artist was born in Austria, attended the conservatory in Linz (Danube) and received most of her vocal training at the University of Music in Vienna, where she attended the lied classes of Walter Berry and Robert Holl. A further stage in her training was the conservatory in Basel, where she also took part in René Jacobs’ masterclasses. She is the winner of the Eberhard-Waechter Prize for young singers at the Vienna State Opera. After winning the Vienna Belvedere Singing Competition in 2003, engagements followed at the Klagenfurt Theatre and the Innsbruck
State Theatre.

From 2005 to 2010 she was a member of the Vienna State Opera ensemble. There she added numerous roles to her repertoire: Idamante (‘Idomeneo’), Cherubino (‘Le nozze di Figaro’, also at the New National Theatre in Tokyo), Zerlina (‘Don Giovanni’), Orlofsky (‘Die Fledermaus’, also in Zurich). Rosina (‘Il barbiere di Siviglia’), Magdalena (‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’, also at the Glyndebourne Festival, DVD on Unitel), Komponist (‘Ariadne auf Naxos’) and Octavian (‘Der Rosenkavalier’), her signature role, with which she has performed internationally and with which she is first identified today.

She also works in Vienna with influential conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Christian Thielemann, Franz Welser-Möst and Daniele Gatti. She went on to develop an international career in the lyric mezzo-soprano repertoire, starting at the Aalto Theatre in Essen and continuing with appearances at the opera houses in Barcelona, Moscow, Munich, Lyon, the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Opera Festival and the Tokyo Spring Festival, the concert halls of Vienna (Musikverein, Konzerthaus), London (Royal Festival Hall), Moscow (Tchaikovsky Hall), Chicago (Symphony Hall) and others.

Her work is reflected in numerous CD and DVD productions such as Debussy’s ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ Arthaus production with Stefan Soltész and Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Hindemith’s ‘Cadillac’ with the BR Radio Orchestra under Stefan Soltész. Dvorak’s ‘Stabat mater’ with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra under Philippe Herreweghe In recent years, she has expanded her repertoire to include bel canto roles such as Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti’s ‘Anna Bolena’ and Eboli in Verdi’s ‘Don Carlo’. In the concert and song sector, new challenges include her involvement with 20th century music such as Zemlinsky’s Orchestral Songs op. 13, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Schönberg’s Book of Hanging Gardens op. 15. In 2024, she was last heard at Tokyo Suntory Hall in Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and at the Brucknerhaus Linz in Mozart’s Requiem with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Adam Fischer.