Katja Stuber, born in Roding in Oberpfalz, studied with Christian Gerhaher at Munich’s College of Music and Drama and was awarded her degree with honours in 2008. For her Masters programme, which she studied with Ruth Ziesak in Saarbrücken, Katja Stuber was equally awarded full honours and is currently studying with Margreet Honig in Amsterdam. In the summer of 2011, Katja Stuber gave her much celebrated debut at the Bayreuth Festival under the musical direction of Thomas Hengelbrock and in the summer of 2013 she made her first guest appearance at the Salzburg Festival, performing in Mozart’s ›Requiem‹.

As a soloist, Stuber regularly performs with such renowned orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and many others. She has worked with celebrated conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Daniel Harding, Peter Dijkstra, Hans-Christoph Rademann and Thomas Hengelbrock and between 2014 and 2017 she was a member of Darmstadt’s State Theatre ensemble. Stuber gave her debut as Yniold in concertante performances of ›Pelléas et Mélisande‹ under Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm and Cologne. In addition, she has sung at the Bach Festival’s opening concert and also with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, with Giovanni Antonini conducting. Katja Stuber is particularly looking forward to her forthcoming debut as ›Mélisande‹ with the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen.

Thomas Dolié was born in the French city of Bordeaux. He studied singing with Irène Jarsky at the Bordeaux National Conservatory and later with Yvonne Minton at the CNIPAL Akademy in Marseille. He gave his concert debut as Papageno in Monpellier, a performance he then went on to repeat in several opera houses across France and which he also performed on stages across the world between 2010 and 2014 in the Peter Brook production of The Magic Flute. Dolié had by this time already been awarded the prize for ›Best Lyrical Artist of the Year‹ by the prestigious French competition Victoires de la Musique, securing the accolade in 2008.

Dolié continues to play a varied array of roles at a considerable number of opera houses, such as Guglielmo (›Cosi fan Tutte‹) and the title role in ›The Marriage of Figaro‹ at the Opéra National de Bordeaux. He has also performed in Britten’s ›A Midsummer Night’s Dream‹ and played the role of Moralès in ›Carmen‹ at the Opéra d’Avignon, not to mention many more. In addition, Dolié offers a wide Baroque repertoire. He has performed the role of Ubalde in Gluck’s opera ›Armide‹ and also in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ›Les Boréades‹ at the Opera House in Zurich. Further roles have seen him perform on stages in New York, Vienna and London. his interpretation of Ramiro in ›L’Heure Espagnole‹ at the Paris Opera and the role of Golaud in the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie’s concertante performance of ›Pelléas et Mélisande‹ feature among his 2017/2018 highlights. He can be heard on tour singing the St Matthew Passion and also regularly performs lieder recitals for international audiences.

Trained at the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon and two seasons spent at the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Lyon, Renaud Delaigue first sang the big roles of Mozartian basses and debuted as Sarastro at the Festival of Saint-Céré. In the meantime, he can fall back on a broad repertoire – with a special interest in the music of the Renaissance and Baroque. As a soloist, Delaigue has already performed Monteverdi roles such as Seneca, Caronte and Nettuno and has appeared with artists such as William Christie or Rinaldo Alessandrini in, among others, Charpentier’s ›David et Jonathas‹, in Lully’s ›Psyche‹ or Cavalli’s ›La Didone‹.

On the concert stage, Delaigue has sung Handel’s ›Messiah‹, Mozart’s Requiem, the 9th Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven and many others. Renaud Delaigue regularly works with the Clément Janequin, Chiome d’Oro, Diabolus in Musica, Simphonie du Marais and Les Traversées Baroques ensembles. In the 2017/2018 season, the singer will make his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as the grandfather in Aribert Reimann’s celebrated opera ›L’invisible‹. 2018 will also see him perform for the first time with The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie in Bremen.

Born in Vilnius to a Lithuanian musical family, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla studied choral and orchestral conducting at the University for Music and the Performing Arts in Graz, and followed this with further studies at the Bologna Conservatory, the Leipzig College of Music and finally at the Zurich College of Art. In 2009, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was accepted into the Conductors’ Forum of the German Music Council (DMR) and the following year she gave her opera debut, conducting ›La Traviata‹ in Osnabrück. This young conductor first attracted international attention in 2012 when she won the coveted ›Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award‹.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was engaged as Assistant Conductor to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2014/15 season and enjoyed overwhelming popularity with both the orchestra and audiences alike. As a result of this popularity she was soon promoted to Associate Conductor, and subsequently took over the position of Music Director of the Salzburg State Theatre for the 2015/16 season. She also received – and accepted – numerous invitations from international orchestras and opera houses in Bern, Heidelberg, Salzburg and Berlin. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has been Music Director at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra since the begininning of the 2016/17 season, where she follows in the footsteps of conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo and Andris Nelsons.

Praised for his »extraordinary« art (New York Times) and his distinctive »move star quality« (Münchner Merkur), this Canadian singer won over audiences worldwide in his performance as Mercutio in the Metropolitan Opera’s recent HD broadcast of ›Roméo et Juliette‹. Elliot Madore studied Singing at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, since which time he has been in regular demand on the most well-known of the American stages such as the San Francisco Opera and the Florida Grand Opera, as well as in many European concert halls.

He gave his European opera debut as Ramiro in ›L’Heure Espagnole‹ at the Glyndebourne Festival. He has also appeared at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and at the Dutch National Opera, and has played the role of the Japanese Emissary in the concertante performance of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol at the Salzburg Festival. Furthermore, the Canadian has been a member of the ensemble at the Opera House Zurich. Early in 2018, Madore gave his debut performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in Ravel’s ›L’enfant et les Sortilèges‹ and has sung the role of Pelléas in ›Pelléas et Melisande‹ with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst, at the Bavarian State Opera, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and with the Croatian National Opera in the famous Stéphane Braunschweig production. Other roles he has performed include Guglielmo (›Così Fan Tutte‹), Schaunard (›La Bohème‹) and the title role in ›Don Giovanni‹. The concert in Bremen’s Glocke is Elliot’s debut with the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen.

As one of the most outstanding British singers of her generation, Dame Felicity Palmer is famous for her powerful, incisive interpretations as well as for her diverse repertoire, which ranges from Monteverdi to Messiaen. This mezzo-soprano feels just as much at home on the opera stage as she does in the concert hall. She has featured in several award-winning productions at the English National Opera (›Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk‹, ›The Magic Flute‹, ›Lulu‹) and also at the Opera Festival at Glyndebourne (›A Midsummer Night’s Dream‹, ›Hamlet‹). Palmer can be heard regularly in performances with the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Bavarian State Opera or at concert halls in Zurich, Toulouse, Amsterdam, Chicago, San Francisco and Paris.

The British singer began her career as a concert soloist and toured Australia regularly, where she gave concerts with several well-known European and North American orchestras. She has been a regular guest at the BBC Proms and has performed with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with conductors like James Levine, Sir Simon Rattle, Antonio Papanno, Ricardo Mutti oder Zubin Mehta. Dame Felicity Palmer has also amassed an extensive catalogue of recordings with, among others, Semyon Bychkov and the WDR Symphony Orchestra, and with Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra. Felicity Palmer was awarded the CBE in 1993 and appointed DBE in 2011.

Xiangnan Yao was born in 1986 in Shenyang, People’s Republic of China, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree in solo singing at the Conservatory of Music in Shenyang. From September 2010, the bass singer was a Master’s student under Ks. Prof. Thomas Thomaschke at Carl-Maria von Weber College of Music in Dresden. In the college opera productions of ›The Poacher‹ and ›The Marriage of Figaro‹, Xiangnan played the roles of Bacculus and Bartolo respectively; in the concert performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ›St. John Passion‹ he sang Jesus. In January 2013, Xiangnan Yao successfully completed his Master’s degree as a solo concert and opera singer.

From the 2012|13 season, Xiangnan Yao accepted a contract as a chorister (2nd bass) at Gera/Altenburg Theatre, where he also performed smaller solo roles. Since the 2017/18 season, he has been a permanent choir member at Theater und Orchester Heidelberg and played the solo role of Oraculo in the German première of Nicola Antonio Porpora’s ›Mitridate‹. His role in the concert performance of Claude Debussy‘s ›Pelléas et Mélisande‹ is at the same time Xiangnan Yao’s debut with The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen.