Sophie Harmsen has become internationally successful both in the concert hall and on the operatic stage, delivering beautifully crafted, emotionally intelligent performances in a diverse range of repertoire.
She most recently made her role and house debut performing Komponist in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at Teatro la Fenice having sung Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg. Praised for her acting skills she has performed a variety of roles at houses including Cape Town Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Opéra de Dijon and Theater an der Wien.
After numerous concerts, solo recitals and CD recordings with some of the most celebrated baroque ensembles she is glad to now feel equally at home in more romantic repertoire. Concerts and CD recordings with Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (Kent Nagano), Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde as well as the Rückert Lieder (Markus Stenz), Dvorak’s Requiem (Philippe Herreweghe), Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (Frieder Bernius, René Jacobs) and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Teodor Currentzis, Pablo Heras-Casado) are now equally represented in her calendar.
This season’s highlights include Beethoven Missa Solemnis with B’Rock under René Jacobs and with the BBC NOW under Andrew Manze, Beethoven’s Mass in C Major on European tour with Orchestre des Champs Elysées under Philippe Herreweghe, Bruckner Te Deum with the SWR Symphonieorchester and Pablo Heras-Casado, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Orchestre des Champs Elysées and Herreweghe, the Hamburger Symphoniker under Pablo Gonzalez and Warsaw Philharmonic under Krysztof Urbanski as well as concerts with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
Sophie Harmsen studied at the University of Cape Town and with Prof. Dr. Edith Wiens, has been mentored by Tobias Truniger for many years and now lives in Berlin with her family.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos (Der Komponist)
La Fenice, Jun 2024
The Mezzo-soprano Sophie Harmsen recreates a desperate Komponist with clear voice, enough volume and with beautiful vocal colours.
Opera World
Sophie Harmsen's Komponist is genuinely human, capable of extremely captivating nuances that absolutely reach into the stomach of the spectator.
Nonsolocinema.com
Das Paradies und die Peri
Symphoniker Hamburg, September 2023
The rich magic of the music enfolds especially in the performance of Sophie Harmsen, the outstanding singer of the evening. Her noble mezzo soprano timbre flows warmly and supplely when she shows compassion for the dying youth, while she articulates the text naturally or astonishes and delights with an unexpected pianissimo. Her freedom and zest for expression is rarely matched by other soloists.
Marcus Stabler, Hamburger Abendblatt
La Clemenza di Tito (Annio)
Teatro Real, Madrid
"Sophie Harmsen's Annio was outstanding, splendid in her projection of high notes and in the way she conveyed her dramatic singing, always with a beautiful voice that shone especially bright in her aria "Tu fosti tradito""
Lectura y locura
"The singer we enjoyed most in terms of timbre, vocal colours, warmth, crispness of enunciation and insightfulness was the Canadian born mezzo-soprano Sophie Harmsen, who embodied a youthful and ever-ready Annio, completely convincing in gesture and bearing."
La Razon
Der Rosenkavalier (Octavian)
Landestheater Salzburg, October 2022
Sophie Harmsen is a captivating Octavian. The silvery duets between Hofmann and Harmsen radiate brighter than the myriad of stars around them. This magic hour of vocal artistry in the four earthly hours running time of this opera culminates in the trio of the finale.
Der Standard Wien
Sophie Harmsen is a vocally powerful Octavian, extraordinarily virile in her acting.
Opera Online
Octavian is 17 years old. One could not have found a more authentic casting than Sophie Harmsen for this trouser role. With her gamine haircut you believe her to be a boy, she steals the show with her powerful, clear mezzosoprano, and also the disguise as Mariandel suits her wonderfully. She wittily and charmingly guides the events.
Kultur Online
Sophie Harmsen shines with an elegantly clear and noble mezzo and virile chutzpah.
NMZ
Sophie Harmsen perfectly guides her silvery top notes to target. One could nearly forget this is a mezzosoprano role. You see a young boy without any life experience, except the forbidden love towards the Marschallin, being thrown into a morally ailing demimonde into which he tumbles like an alien into this planetary set.
Drehpunkt Kultur
Sophie Harmsen Concert and Oratorio Repertoire
| J.S. Bach | Johannes-Passion; Matthäus-Passion |
|---|---|
| C.P.E. Bach | Magnificat |
| Beethoven | Sinfonie Nr. 9 |
| Brahms | Alt Rhapsodie op. 53 |
| Britten | A Charm of Lullabies |
| Bruckner | Missa Solemnis |
| Bizet | Adieux de l'hôtesse arabe |
| Caldara | Oratorio di San Giovanni Nepomuceno |
| Charpentier | Te Deum |
| de Falla | El sombrero de tres picos |
| Duruflé | Requiem |
| Dvoràk | Requiem |
| Hasse | Miserere in c-Moll |
| Haydn | Arianna a Naxos |
| Händel | Dixit Dominus (Sop II und Alt) |
| Händel/Mozart | Messias |
| Mahler | Das Lied von der Erde |
| Martin | Le vin herbé |
| F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy | Athalia |
| W.A. Mozart | Requiem |
| Myslivecek | La Passione di nostro signore |
| Nicolai | Messe in d-Moll |
| Pergolesi | Stabat Mater |
| Ravel | Cinq melodie populaires greques |
| Reger | Requiem |
| Respighi | Il Tramonto |
| Reutter | Motetto di tempore |
| Rolle | Matthäus Passion |
| Spohr | Die letzten Dinge |
| Rihm | Deus Passus (mezzosopran) |
| Rossini | Petite Messe Solennelle |
| Saint-Säens | Oratorio de Noël |
| Schreker | Fünf Gesänge für eine tiefe Stimme |
| Schubert | Numerous Masses |
| R. Schumann | Faust-Szenen (Mangel, Mater Samaritana, Mater Gloriosa, Schuld, Maria Aegyptica, Alt I) |
| Schnittke | Requiem |
| Telemann | Der Tag der Gerichts |
| Verdi | Requiem |
| Vivaldi | Gloria |
| Wagner | Wesendonck Lieder |
Sophie Harmsen Opera Repertoire
| G. Bizet | Carmen (Mercedes) |
|---|---|
| B. Britten | A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hermia) |
| F. Danzi | Der Berggeist (Marthe) |
| C.W. Gluck | Orphee et Euridice (Orphee*) |
| C. Gounod | Faust (Siebel*) |
| G.F. Händel | Alcina (Ruggiero*, Bradamante) |
| J. Haydn | La canterina (Don ettore) |
| E. Humperdinck | Hänsel und Gretel (Hänsel) |
| H. Huyssen | Masque (Prof. Dubuffet) |
| J. Massenet | Werther (Charlotte*) |
| C. Monteverdi | L’Incoronazione di Poppea: (Ottavia*, Nutrice) |
| W.A. Mozart | La Clemenza di Tito (Annio, Sesto*) |
| J. Myslivecek | L’Olimpiade (Argene) |
| J. Offenbach | Les Contes D‘Hoffmann (Nicklausse *) |
| H. Purcell | Dido and Aeneas (Dido, 2nd Woman, 1st & 2nd Witch, Sorceress) |
| J.P. Rameau | Hippolyte et Aricie (Phedre*) |
| T. Rayna | A Valley Song (Stella) |
| G. Rossini | Il barbiere di Sevilla (Rosina*) |
| R. Strauss | Der Rosenkavalier (Octavian), |
| G.P. Telemann | Otto (Mathilda) |
| J.R. Zumsteeg | Die Geisterinsel (Fabio) |
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