Magdalena Kožená

Born in the Czech city of Brno, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená studied singing and piano at the Brno Conservatory and with Eva Blahová at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. Magdalena Kožená won several important prizes in the Czech Republic and worldwide. Her breakthrough came in 1995 when she won the Sixth International Mozart Competition in Salzburg.

On the opera stage, she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002 as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni and returned in 2013 as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo - a role she has also sung at the Glyndebourne Festival and in Berlin and Lucerne. She made her first appearance at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2003 as Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and has been a regular guest since, most recently as Octavian in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier in the 2019/20 season. The role of Octavian has also taken her to the Staatsoper Berlin (2009) and the Baden-Baden Easter Festival (2015), while other operatic highlights include the title role in Bizet's Carmen (Salzburg Easter Festival and Summer Festival 2012), Martinůs Juliette (Staatsoper Berlin 2016) and the Waitress in Kaija Saariaho's new opera Innocence at the Festival d'Aix en Provence (2021).

Magdalena Kožená has worked with the world's leading conductors throughout her illustrious career, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Sir Charles Mackerras and Sir Roger Norrington. Her outstanding concert partners include the pianists Daniel Barenboim, Yefim Bronfman, Malcolm Martineau, András Schiff and Mitsuko Uchida, with whom she has performed in such prestigious concert halls as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and Salzburg Festivals. Magdalena Kožená's understanding of historically informed performance practice has been deepened in her collaboration with period-instrument ensembles such as the Venice Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Il Giardino Armonico. She is also in demand as a soloist with the Berlin, Vienna and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras as well as the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia and the Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam.

In recent seasons, Magdalena Kožená has developed a series of projects that represent an eclectic mix of sound worlds and influences and have delighted audiences on tours throughout Europe and Asia. These include concerts with the Czech swing ensemble The Melody Makers performing Cole Porter and other swing and big band numbers from the 1930s and 40s, semi-staged performances of the music of Claudio Monteverdi and Luciano Berio staged by Ondřej Havelka, and performances with the Spanish baroque ensemble Private Musicke and the flamenco expert Antonio El Pipa with his Compañía de Flamenco.

Magdalena Kožená was signed exclusively by Deutsche Grammophon in 1999, and in 2017 she entered into a long-term relationship with the Dutch classical label Pentatone, releasing her debut album Il Giardino dei sospiri for the label in May 2019, together with harpsichordist Václav Luks and the Czech Baroque orchestra Collegium 1704. Her second album Soirée is an intimate chamber music recording, and her most recent recording Nostalgia, in collaboration with Yefim Bronfman, was released in 2021.

For her services to French music, she was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2003.

As of August 2022