Audio

Richard Wagner: Scene of Waltraute "Höre mit Sinn" from Götterdämmerung.

Georg Friedrich Händel: Aria of Cornelia "Non ha più che temere" from Giulio Cesare.

Richard Wagner: Scene of Brangäne "O Süße! Traute! Teure!" from Tristan & Isolde.

Camille Saint Saens: Recitative and Aria of Dalila "Amour! Viens aider ma faiblesse"
from Samson & Dalila.

Richard Wagner: Aria of Erda "Weiche Wotan, weiche" from Das Rheingold

Julia Oesch
Mezzo-Soprano

German mezzo-soprano Julia Oesch performs in Europe and the USA. As an opera singer she has been engaged at the Huntington Theatre in Boston/USA, at the German theaters in Munich (Staatsoper), Hannover, Wiesbaden, Bielefeld, Kassel, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Koblenz, Weimar, in Italy (Venice (La Fenice), Palermo, Napels, Cagliari, Verona, Trieste, Rome, Catania), at the Opéra du Rhin Strasbourg, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris (France), at the Spanish Teatro de la Maestranza in Sevilla, at the Opernhaus Zürich (Switzerland), in Lisbon (Portugal) at the Teatro São Carlos, in Thailand at the opera house in Bangkok, among others. In her opera repertoire her engagements cover the works by Richard Wagner, i.e. the roles of her Fach in the Ring des Nibelungen: Erda (Rheingold & Siegfried), Floßhilde (Rheingold), Fricka (Rheingold & Walküre), Rossweisse, Schwertleite, Siegrune (Walküre), 1. Norne, Waltraute (Götterdämmerung); Tristan & Isolde (Brangäne); Der fliegende Holländer (Mary). Furthermore her roles include Orfeo from Orfeo & Euridice, Mozart’s 3. Dame from Die Zauberflöte, 1. Magd from Elektra by Strauss or Margret from Berg’s Wozzek. Conductors, such as Christian Thielemann, Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Kuhn and Christoph von Dohnányi are most important in Julia Oesch's career. Acclaimed music festivals invite Ms. Oesch as an opera and concert singer, i.e. the Kammeroper Schloß Rheinsberg (Germany), the Tanglewood Music Center in the USA, the Ravinia Festival near Chicago (USA), the Tiroler Festspiele in Erl, the Richard Wagner Festival in Wels, the Wiener Festwochen and the Salzburger Festspiele (all in Austria), as well as the French Festival in Aix-en-Provence and the March Music Days in Bulgaria, where she sang Mahler’s Lied von der Erde.

Julia Oesch's musical studies began with playing the violin. While studying at the Frankfurt Conservatory she also received voice lessons from Karin Geber-Brandt who is still advising her vocally. In 1992 Julia Oesch continued to study voice at the Musikhochschule Detmold with Ingeborg Ruß. In the summer of 1994 she was a scholarship recipient at the Tanglewood Music Center. There she met and worked with Phyllis Curtin and Seiji Ozawa. She earned her Master of Music Diploma at Boston University in 1997, studying with Phyllis Curtin. Julia Oesch received additional training in masterclasses with such artists as Barbara Bonney, Christa Ludwig, Thomas Hampson, Brigitte Fassbaender and Gustav Kuhn.

Concert and church music continue to be important aspects in Julia Oesch’s performing career. She has been praised for her passionate and expressive style. Her radiant tone was described in the Boston Globe as ”rich-toned”. Besides the German Lied, she is performing French and American compositions, such as of Duparc, Bizet, Copland and Ives. With the pianist Jens Barnieck who is an alumnus of State University of New York at Buffalo she often concentrates on American song literature in concerts. Her repertoire in oratorio includes Elias by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi, Bach’s Christmas-Oratorio, the Johannes-Passion, the B-Minor Mass and the Matthäus-Passion, Händel’s Messiah, the Missa in C and the Requiem by Mozart and various masses by Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner. The Choral Fantasy, the Symphony No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven, the Alto-Rhapsody by Johannes Brahms, as well as Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.8 (Contralto II/ Maria Aegyptiaca) and Das Lied von der Erde are the symphonic compositions in her repertoire.

Julia Oesch is represented with four roles at the complete edition of Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen (Arte Nova label): Das Rheingold: Erda; Die Walküre: Fricka; Siegfried: Erda; Götterdämmerung: 1. Norne. Furthermore she recorded Verdi's La Traviata (Annina), Die tote Stadt (Lucienne) by Erich W. Korngold (DVD) and Die ägyptische Helena (Elfe) by Richard Strauss.

In 2008 the First FrauenKunstFestival (Women Arts Festival) took place in Worms (Germany), where Julia Oesch was involved as both co-director and a performer. The TV stations ZDF and SWR accompanied the festival and broadcasted their reports.

In the present season Ms. Oesch is engaged at the Nationaltheater Weimar with the role of Larina in Tschaikovsky’s Evgenij Onegin. Furthermore she is singing Annina (Rosenkavalier) by Strauss und Siegrune in Wagner’s Walküre am Staatstheater Karlsruhe.

In November 2010 the radio station SWR2 broadcast a production of Julia Oesch and the pianist Jens Barnieck about the composer and writer Paul Bowles, on the occasion of his anniversary. Subsequently the duo was invited by the International Performance Center in Tangier (Morocco). In the adoptive city of Bowles the two artists performed multimedia-song recitals with great success in June 2011.In the fall/winter of 2011 the duo will be touring Germany to perform more multimedia-song recitals.

In December 2011 a concert version of the opera Les Amants de Vérone by French composer Paul de Richard, Marquis d’Ivry will be premiered in Mainz (Germany), with Julia Oesch singing the role of Juliette. In 2012 the opera will be performed in France.