Ulrike Sonntag

• Name — Ulrike Sonntag • Birthplace — Esslingen am Neckar, West Germany • Education — Hochschule der Künste Berlin • Occupation — * Operatic soprano • Academic teacher • Organizations — * Staatstheater Stuttgart • Vienna State Opera • Musikhochschule Stuttgart • Awards — Deutscher Musikwettbewerb

Born in Esslingen am Neckar, she attended the Georgii-Gymnasium at her hometown, concluding with the Abitur. She studied music pedagogy and German in Stuttgart, and then studied voice in Romania and at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin with Irmgard Hartmann-Dressler (1924–2013). She took master classes with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann. In 1985, Sonntag won the second prize at the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb in Bonn. Sonntag had already made her stage debut in 1983, while she was studying, at the Hamburgische Staatsoper as Oriane in Johann Christian Bach's Amadis. She became a member of the ensembles in Heidelberg and Mannheim. In 1988, she moved on to the Staatstheater Stuttgart. She was a member of the Vienna State Opera from 1991 to 1994, where she appeared as Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio, Micaela in Bizet's Carmen, Musetta in Puccini's La bohème, and in the Strauss roles Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and Zdenka in Arabella, among others. She appeared as a guest at opera houses in Berlin (Frau Fluth in Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor), Hamburg, Cologne Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Monte Carlo, Cairo, Trieste and Tel Aviv, among others. Sonntag has held masterclasses in France, Israel, South America and Bulgaria, among others. She has been a professor of voice at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart since 2005.