Karolina Makuła
mezzo-soprano
© Barbara Aumüller
Karolina Makuła, a member of our Opera Studio from 2019 - 2022, joined the Ensemble last season, during which she sang Adalgisa in Norma, Giovanna in Rigoletto and Marthe / Bellangère in a new production of Reimann's L'invisible, following on from Amando & Marcolfa in new productions of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre & Wolfgang Fortner's rarely performed Don Perlimplín's Love for Belisa in his Garden the season before. In 2025/26 she adds new roles to her repertoire: Suzuki in Madame Butterfly and Turno, a Maid & Fjodor in new productions of Steffani's Amor vien dal destino, Fortner's Bluthochzeit / Blood Wedding & Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. She enjoyed a triumph at the Tirol Festival in Erl, where she also sang Wellgunde and a Stable Girl in Götterdämmerung and Humperdinck's Königskinder, with Paolo in Mercadante's Francesca da Rimini and sang Hannah in Weinberg's The (female) Passenger at the Staatstheater in Mainz. She made her debut in Frankfurt with Desdemona in a new production of Rossini's (5 tenor!) Otello, which was followed by Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto, Enrichetta die Francia (I puritani), Francesca in the 2021 world premiere of Lucia Ronchetti's Inferno (and a film about the production in the Bockenheimer Depot which was shown at the Festival di Due Mondi in Spoleto), Mercédès (Carmen), Pippo (La gazza ladra), Kate Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) and 2nd Witch (Dido and Aeneas). She also sang Tisbe in La Cenerentola, a Spanish Woman in Schreker's Elusive Sound (get the CD! Oehmsclassics) and the Bogus Boy in a new Weill's The Tsar wants his Photograph Taken for the company in 2022/23. She made her professional debut as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, where she graduated from the Nowowiejski Music Academy. She joined the Teatr Wielki's Akademia Operowa in Warsaw in 2017 and appeared at Polish National Opera in Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, which was later performed at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Her repertoire includes Olga (Eugene Onegin), 2nd Lady (Die Zauberflöte) and Fricka (Das Rheingold). She won prizes at competitions including the Drezdenko National Singing Competition, J. E. J. Reszke Competition in Czestochowa and the singing and chamber music competition in Bydgoszcz.