Biography

Attending the University „Carl Maria von Weber“ in Dresden Dagmar Schellenberger gained her musical education. Still studying she won the International Dvorak Song Contest in Karlsbad, which was the starting point for her international career.

At the beginning of her career at the Komische Oper Berlin she was renowned in Mozart parts. She performed as Pamina in Zauberfloete, Susanna and Contessa in Figaro, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, and Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Giovanni. For her performance as Agathe in Freischuetz, which she also sang at the Berliner Staatsoper and the Oper in Frankfurt am Main, she received a “critics price” from the Berlin newspapers.

The broad repertoire of Dagmar Schellenberger reaches from Monteverdi’s Poppea (Opera Marseille) and Haendel’s Arianna in Guistino (guest roles from Amsterdam to Vienna) to Rosalinde in Johann Strauß’s Fledermaus (i.a. at the Staatsoper in Berlin and Hamburg, Opera Bastille, Paris and Santiago de Chile). At the world premiere of Matthus Farinelli Dagmar Schellenberger - in her role as Maria Strada - was nominated as Singer of the Year 1998 by a reviewer of the Opernwelt. In another world premiere she sang the Hildegard in Siegfried Wagner’s Heiliger Linde. Impersonating all three women in Les Contes des Hoffmann Dagmar Schellenberger was able to show the wide scope of her state of art, which was celebrated by the press as a “tour de force”. For several years now Dagmar Schellenberger has been supervised in vocal training by KS Brigitte Eisenfeld.

Engagements and Guest roles led Dagmar Schellenberger not only to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Staatsopern of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Dresden, Duesseldorf, Stuttgart, Zurich and Vienna but also to Buenos Aires (with the Zauberfloete and Cosi fan Tutte), New York (with Orfeo ed Euridice and La Donna del Lago), Amsterdam (with Arabella and Koenigin von Saba), Bruxelles, Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Venice, Nice, Nancy, Toulouse, Lausanne, Monte Carlo, Roma, Milan, Palermo, Geneve, Turin, Cagliari, Valencia, Sevilla, Jerusalem, Nagoya and Tokyo.

Parts in her repertoire are Elisabeth in Tannhaeuser, Eva in Meistersinger, and Elsa in Lohengrin. Further on she performed in several Strauss parts, e.g. Marschallin in Rosenkavalier, Arabella in Arabella and the countess in Carpriccio.

Dagmar Schellenberger also sticks out as a ballad singer. Singing oratorios of the Matthaeus Passion with the Cleveland Orchestra or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra she was also appreciated singing Schostakowitsch’s 14^th Symphony at the Gewandhaus Leipzig.

In 1993 Dagmar Schellenberger made an exclusive contract with EMI Classics where she recorded Deutsche Arien from Haendel to Wagner as well as international lullabies in six different languages. Her discography is pretty impressive: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Humperdinck’s Koenigskinder or Eugen d’Albert’s Tote Augen are only a few examples. Including original recordings of performances there are more than 30 CD records with Dagmar Schellenberger.

Dagmar Schellenberger has worked with renowned artists like Hartmut Haenchen, Milan Horvath, Kurt Masur, Fabio Luisi, Franz Welser - Möst, Neville Marriner, Ralf Weikert, Leopold Hager, Rolf Reuter, Alain Lombard, Edo de Waart, Marek Jankowski, Michail Jurowski, Vladimir Jurowski, Ivor Bolton, Pierre Boulez, Kazushi Ono, Lawrence Renes, Christian Thielemann, Zubin Mentha, Riccardo Muti and Yuri Temirkanow.

With her debut at the scala in Milan in 2004 she experienced a special highlight performing the Blanche in Les Dialogues des Carmelites with Riccardo Muti. This was followed by admiring acknowledgement by the national italian press .

The following year (2005) she received another invitation to the scala as Lisa in Tschaikowsky’s Pique Dame (Queen of Spades) which was also celebrated in the press afterwards. As a steady part of the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Duesseldorf from 2006 to 2009 she performed in Katja Kabanova, as Saffi in Zigeunerbaron, Rosalinde in Fledermaus and Eva in Meistersinger. She sang the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier worldwide, e.g. with great success with Edo de Waart in Hongkong in 2007 and again in the following year in 2008.

The year 2009 was characterized by triumphant Katja Kabanova performances and in 2010 was her debut as Ariadne in "Ariadne auf Naxos" in Dusseldorf.

For fifteen years Dagmar Schellenberger has been working pedagogically with singers and students, also as a guest professor at the UdK (University of Arts) in Berlin from 2006 til 2012 and as jury member at large singing competitions.

In spring of 2011 Dagmar Schellenberger became the new designated Intendant of the Seefestspiele Mörbisch which she previously got to know and love during her engagement at the Seefestspiele as "Gräfin Mariza" in 2004 and "Lustige Witwe" in 2005.

In June of 2012 she sang at the Wiener Konzerthaus in Weinberger’s opera “Wallenstein”.

In September 2012 the chamber singer took over the directorship of the Seefestspiele Mörbisch. In her first season as the director of the Seefestspiele Mörbisch she celebrated great success with Millöckers "Der Bettelstudent" in the summer of 2013.       

As Iduna in Paul Burkhards operetta „Das Feuerwerk“ Dagmar Schellenberger sang in january of 2014.

 

As of now she is inmidst of preparations for her second season in Mörbisch with the summer production of Jerry Bocks Musical "Anatevka" in July/August 2014, where she will be singing the Golde herself.