Arabella

Stephanie Houtzeel, an American mezzo-soprano, was born in Kassel and raised in Boston. She studied at the Juilliard School in New York and is the recipient of several competition awards. She has appeared, among others, at the Semperoper Dresden, New York City Opera, Theater an der Wien, Opéra de Lyon, Opéra National du Rhin, Graz Opera, as well as at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals. Since the 2010/11 season, she has been a member of the ensemble at the Vienna State Opera, where she has performed roles such as the Composer (Ariadne auf Naxos), Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Kreusa (Reimann’s Medea), and Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus). Her repertoire includes roles by Handel, Strauss, and Mozart. She sang Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier) at the Vienna State Opera, Opéra Bastille, the Kennedy Center with Renée Fleming, the New Israeli Opera, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Graz Opera, and the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. For her interpretation of the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos under Philippe Jordan, she was honored by the magazine Opernwelt as one of the best young singers. She has also performed this role in Vienna, Zurich, Tokyo, Cologne, Tel Aviv, and Antwerp. In doing so, she worked with, among others, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Franz Welser-Möst, Fabio Luisi, Adam Fischer, and Marek Janowski. As a concert singer, she has appeared at Lincoln Center New York, the Wiener Musikverein, Rome, Brussels, Washington, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leipzig, Novosibirsk, and Santiago de Compostela. Her recordings include Lully’s Armide, Suppé’s Fatinitza, and Mozart’s Requiem under Teodor Currentzis. In 2015, her song CD Nostalgia (works by Mahler, Ives, and Piazzolla) was released.

Diana Damrau is a regular guest on the stages of the world’s leading opera and concert houses. Her extensive repertoire lies in the lyric and coloratura fach and includes, among others, the title roles in Donizetti’s "Lucia di Lammermoor," Massenet’s "Manon," as well as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s "The Magic Flute." She regularly performs at the most prestigious venues such as the Bavarian State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and La Scala in Milan. Roles were specially composed for her in the operas "A Harlot’s Progress" by Iain Bell (Theater an der Wien, 2013) and "1984" by Lorin Maazel (Royal Opera House, 2005). As an exclusive artist with Warner Classics/Erato, Diana Damrau has released numerous award-winning CD and DVD recordings. As a lieder interpreter, she regularly performs in renowned concert halls such as London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and the Berlin Philharmonie. She shares a close artistic partnership with pianist Helmut Deutsch and tenor Jonas Kaufmann, with whom she presented a successful lieder recital tour for the third time in spring and summer 2025, including at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Salzburg Festival. On the opera stage, she recently sang roles including the Marschallin ("Der Rosenkavalier") at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Diana Damrau is a Kammersängerin of the Bavarian State Opera, recipient of the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art, and the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Since autumn 2024, she has been teaching as a principal voice professor at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Michael Volle studied with Josef Metternich and Rudolf Piernay. After engagements at the opera houses in Mannheim, Bonn, Düsseldorf, and Cologne, he became a member of the ensembles at the Zurich Opera House and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. In Zurich, he performed roles such as Marcello (La bohème), Eugene Onegin, Yeletsky (Pique Dame), Roland (Fierrabras), Sixtus Beckmesser, Hans Sachs (Meistersinger von Nürnberg), and Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande). Guest appearances have taken him to all major opera houses at home and abroad (including Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, London, Paris, Barcelona, Vienna, Milan, Florence, New York) and to prestigious festivals (such as Salzburg, Bregenz, Baden-Baden). At the Bayreuth Festival, he sang Beckmesser in 2007 and 2008, Hans Sachs in 2017, and the Dutchman in 2023. Most recently, he appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Florence in the title role of Verdi’s Falstaff, and as Hans Sachs at the Vienna State Opera. In Milan, he impressed as Pater Ecstaticus in Mahler’s 8th Symphony and as Jochanaan in Salome. At the Hamburg State Opera, he shone alongside Klaus Florian Vogt in the role of Wolfram in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. In 2008 and 2023, the magazine Opernwelt named him “Singer of the Year.” For his interpretation of Wozzeck, he was awarded the German Theater Prize “Der Faust” in 2009. In recognition of his stage achievements, he received the award for “Best Male Singer” at the Oper! Awards 2023. At the Zurich Opera House, his recent roles include Wolfram in Tannhäuser (2012), the title role in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (2016), Nabucco (2019), and Boris Godunov (2020).

The Slovak tenor Pavol Breslik was engaged at the Berlin State Opera from 2003 to 2006 and was named “Young Singer of the Year” by the specialist magazine Opernwelt in 2005. Since 2006, he has been a regular guest at major European opera houses. At the Vienna State Opera, he sang Lenski (Eugene Onegin), Nemorino (L’elisir d’amore), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), and Alfredo (La traviata), and at the Bavarian State Opera, he made two important role debuts: Gennaro (Lucrezia Borgia) alongside Edita Gruberova and Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) with Diana Damrau. At the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he appeared as Lenski as well as Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Don Ottavio, and Tamino (The Magic Flute). He has also guested at the Paris Opera, the Liceu Barcelona, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Berlin State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, the Aix Festival, the Theater an der Wien, the Semperoper Dresden, and the Grand Théâtre Geneva. From 2012 to 2018, Pavol Breslik was a member of the ensemble at the Zurich Opera House, where he sang roles such as Števa (Jenůfa), Don Ottavio, Nadir (Les pêcheurs de perles), Peter Quint (The Turn of the Screw), and Leicester (Maria Stuarda). Recently, he made a highly successful debut as the Prince (Rusalka) at the National Theatre Prague. In 2021, he was awarded the honorary title “Bavarian Kammersänger.”

The tenor Johan Krogius began his musical training in the boys’ choir of the Cathedral Cantores Minores in Helsinki. He later studied in Helsinki and Stockholm, won the Timo Mustakallio Singing Competition in 2021, and in the same year received first prize at the Helsinki Lied Competition. In opera, he has performed roles such as Jaquino ("Fidelio") and Pong ("Turandot") in Helsinki; First Man and Juhana in Joonas Kokkonen’s "The Last Temptations" at the Opera in Jyväskylä; Don Ottavio ("Don Giovanni") at the Finnish National Opera; Kuska ("Khovanshchina") with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen in Helsinki and Stockholm; as well as Tamino ("The Magic Flute") at the Opera in Tampere and at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, where he also appeared as Don Ottavio and Ismaele ("Nabucco") in 2024 and as Macduff ("Macbeth") in 2025. During the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons, he was a member of the International Opera Studio at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. There, his roles included Leukippos (Strauss’s "Daphne"), Tamino, First Armoured Man, and First Priest in "The Magic Flute," the Innkeeper and Faninal’s Majordomo ("Der Rosenkavalier"), a Trojan ("Idomeneo"), Parpignol ("La bohème"), and Borsa ("Rigoletto"). As a guest, he returned to the Berlin Staatsoper as Tybalt ("Roméo et Juliette"), the Apparition of a Young Man ("Die Frau ohne Schatten"), the First Knight of the Grail ("Parsifal"), and the Innkeeper. On the concert stage, he has performed with the Jyväskylä Sinfonia, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 2024 he made his debut with Mozart’s "Requiem" at the Berlin Philharmonie.

The Swiss baritone Felix Gygli is the winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2023 and the Lied Prize of the Queen Sonja Competition 2024. Since the 2023/24 season, he has been a member of the International Opera Studio at the Zurich Opera House. He is a Samling Artist and was a “Young Artist” at the National Opera Studio in London in 2022/23. He completed his training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He was a member of the Académie Lyrique of the Verbier Festival 2023, where he was awarded the Prix Thierry Mermod as the “Most Promising Singer.” In January 2024, he participated in the Carnegie Hall SongStudio under the patronage of Renée Fleming. Felix Gygli sang the role of the 2nd Apprentice (Wozzeck) at the Verbier Festival 2023 and appears as Starveling in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Zurich Opera House. He opened the 2023/24 season with the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier in an opera gala concert conducted by Chloé Dufresne. Additionally, he performed as a baritone soloist with the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn in Brahms’ German Requiem. He is a passionate recitalist and has given song recitals with pianists JongSun Woo and Tomasz Domański in the UK, France, and Switzerland. He made his US debut with a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Pierre-Nicolas Colombat at the Boston Text and Tone Festival. His oratorio repertoire includes Fauré’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Bach’s St Matthew Passion. In 2022, he made his operatic debut as Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with Ouverture Opéra Sion.

Felix Gygli is a new scholarship holder of the Hildegard Zadek Foundation and receives the Liselotte Becker and Ursula van Harten Scholarship.

The bass Brent Michael Smith is from the United States. He studied voice at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and at the University of Northern Iowa, as well as piano at Hope College in Michigan. He was a finalist in the Queen Sonja International Music Competition (2021) and a semifinalist in the Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions (2020), and he has been a prizewinner at international singing competitions such as the Grand Rapids Opera Competition, the Giargiari Bel Canto Competition, the Opera Birmingham Competition, the Opera Index Competition, and the Concorso Lirico Internazionale di Portofino. He has also received scholarships from the Loren L. Zachary Society and the Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition in Miami. In the United States, he has sung Zuniga ("Carmen"), Friedrich Bhaer (Mark Adamo’s "Little Women"), and Ashby ("La fanciulla del West") at Michigan Opera, Antonio ("Le nozze di Figaro") at Toledo Opera, Ariodante ("Xerxes") at the Glimmerglass Festival, Lakai ("Ariadne auf Naxos") at the Santa Fe Opera, as well as Celio (Prokofiev’s "The Love for Three Oranges") and Peter Quince ("A Midsummer Night’s Dream") at Opera Philadelphia. During the 2020/21 season, he was a member of the International Opera Studio at the Zurich Opera House and joined the ensemble in the following season, 2021/22. Since then, he has appeared at the Zurich Opera House in roles such as Sparafucile ("Rigoletto"), Raimondo ("Lucia di Lammermoor"), Prince Gremin ("Eugene Onegin"), Frère Laurent ("Roméo et Juliette"), Fafner ("Das Rheingold"), and Cesare Angelotti ("Tosca").

Yewon Han is a South Korean soprano. She completed her bachelor's degree in Classical Singing at Seoul National University and continued her training in the Young Artist Program at the Korea National Opera Studio (2021–2022) as well as at the International Opera Studio Zurich (2022–2024). Yewon Han has performed a wide range of roles in Korea and Europe, including Lauretta in “Gianni Schicchi,” Papagena in “Die Zauberflöte,” Adele in “Die Fledermaus,” Romilda in “Serse,” Li Si in “Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer,” Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Najade in “Ariadne auf Naxos.” In 2025, she will appear as Ophelia in “Hamlet” at the Buxton International Festival. She has received numerous awards, including 1st prize at the 60th Concurso Tenor Viñas (2023), 3rd prize at the International Singing Competition Neue Stimmen (2022), and several first prizes at major singing competitions in South Korea. In the 2025/26 season, Yewon Han will continue her work as a full ensemble member of the Zurich Opera, performing a diverse repertoire.

Irène Friedli grew up in Räuchlisberg, Switzerland, and graduated from the Basel Music Academy with a soloist diploma. The mezzo-soprano furthered her studies in Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s interpretation class in Berlin, attended masterclasses with Brigitte Fassbaender, and continued her training with Helen Keller. She has won numerous prizes at international lieder competitions. Since the 1994/95 season, she has been a member of the Zurich Opera House ensemble, where she has performed roles such as Second and Third Lady (“Die Zauberflöte”), Mercédès (“Carmen”), the title role in Ravel’s “L’Enfant et les sortilèges,” Elsbeth (“Schlafes Bruder”), Lily (“Harley”), Annina and Flora (“La traviata”), Flosshilde (“Das Rheingold,” “Götterdämmerung”), Marcellina (“Le nozze di Figaro”), Emilia (“Otello”), Lucia (“Cavalleria rusticana”), Olga in Peter Eötvös’ “Drei Schwestern,” Marthe in Gounod’s “Faust,” Margret (“Wozzeck”), Lovis in Jörn Arnecke’s “Ronja Räubertochter,” Flower Maiden and Voice from Above (“Parsifal”), Gertrud/Knusperhexe (“Hänsel und Gretel”), Clotilde (“Norma”), Mother/Other Mother (“Coraline”), Card Dealer (“Arabella”), and Nurse (“Boris Godunow”). In the world premiere of the family opera “Odyssee,” she played Eurykleia/Mother, and in “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” she performed Tanneke. In 2012, she appeared at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Most recently in Zurich, she has sung roles such as the Queen of Hearts (“Alice in Wonderland”), Filipjewna (“Jewgeni Onegin”), Tisbe (“La Cenerentola”), Miss Bentson (“Lakmé”), Frau Waas/Frau Mahlzahn (“Jim Knopf”), Head Cook (“Amerika”), and Ninetta (“I vespri siciliani”).

The tenor Samuel Wallace is from Brazil, where he studied voice with Lício Bruno. In 2024, he received a scholarship from the Mozarteum Brasileiro and subsequently participated in Rolf Beck’s International Choir Academy in Lübeck. During this time, concerts took him to Germany as well as to the Philharmonie de Paris under the direction of Raphaël Pichon. His operatic repertoire includes roles such as Tamino ("Die Zauberflöte") and the title role in Guilherme Bernstein’s opera "Serafim and the Place Where One Does Not Die". In 2024, he portrayed Dorvil in Rossini’s "La scala di seta" and took part in the Gala Lírica of the 13th Tenor Meeting of Brazil at the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. Samuel Wallace was a semifinalist in the Paris Opera Competition, a finalist in the Maria Callas Competition, and a prizewinner in the Joaquina Lapinha and Natércia Lopes singing competitions.
Starting with the 2025/26 season, he will be a member of the International Opera Studio at the Zurich Opera House.

Martin Zysset was born and raised in Solothurn. He trained as a clarinetist while simultaneously studying voice, complementing his education with master classes with Ernst Haefliger and Edith Mathis. In 1990/91, he was a member of the International Opera Studio at Zurich Opera House and, at the same time, a scholarship holder of the Migros Culture Percentage and a prizewinner of the Pro Arte Lyrica Competition in Lausanne. Since 1992, he has been a regular guest at the Selzach Summer Festival. He has been a permanent member of the Zurich Opera House ensemble since the 1991/92 season, where he has built up a wide-ranging repertoire encompassing both comic and dramatic roles, including Pedrillo, Monostatos, Spoletta, Incredibile (“Andrea Chénier”), Jaquino, Kudrjasch (“Káťa Kabanová”), Alfred (“Die Fledermaus”), Tamino, Tybalt, Dancaïro, Arturo, the Witch, Brighella, and the male lead in Udo Zimmermann’s “Weiße Rose.” He achieved great success as Simplicius in Johann Strauss’s operetta of the same name, which was also released on CD and DVD. Guest performances have taken him throughout Europe, to Shanghai, and to San Diego with “The Magic Flute,” “Le nozze di Figaro,” “Fidelio,” and “Tannhäuser.” For Bavarian Radio, he recorded Lehár’s operetta “Paganini.” Most recently at Zurich Opera House, he has appeared as Don Basilio (“Le nozze di Figaro”), Tschekalinski (“The Queen of Spades”), Triquet (“Eugene Onegin”), the Chief Eunuch (“The Land of Smiles”), Goro (“Madama Butterfly”), Spoletta (“Tosca”), Dormont (“La scala di seta”), the White Minister (“Le Grand Macabre”), the Devil/Narrator (“The Soldier’s Tale”), the Third Jew (“Salome”), Schmidt (“Werther”), and Feri (“The Csárdás Princess”).

Mentor Bajrami comes from Switzerland and studied at the European Film Actor School (EFAS) in Zurich until 2018. He appeared in various EFAS productions, including the roles of Trigorin and Srebrejkow in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, Boris in Yasmina Reza’s Bella Figura, and Jean in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Additionally, he performed at the Zurich Opera House in Così fan tutte and in 2017 appeared in the Stand Up! Comedy Show at the Bernhard Theater. Since 2018, he has been working as a freelance actor in Switzerland.