
KATHRYN LEWEK
SOPRANO
BIOGRAPHY
American soprano Kathryn Lewek is a born communicator. Combining charismatic stage presence with a voice of sumptuous range, crystalline purity, and rich emotional power, she headlines major productions at the foremost opera houses and festivals worldwide, from New York’s Metropolitan Opera to Austria’s Salzburg Festival. Lauded in an increasing array of leading lyric and dramatic coloratura roles, including Mozart’s Queen of the Night, the signature role with which she has repeatedly broken records, Lewek also wins accolades for her orchestral collaborations and sensitive interpretations of contemporary art song. As the New York Times recognizes, “singing like Lewek’s is what the magic of opera is all about.”
Lewek continues to expand her repertoire with a series of role débuts in the 2025/26 season. The soprano makes her highly anticipated début in the title role of Alcina in concert performances in Paris, Barcelona and Montpellier with the Ensemble Artaserse and maestro Philippe Jaroussky. Lewek also takes on the role of Elettra for the first time in Calixto Bieito’s new production of Idomeneo at La Monnaie. Later in the season, the soprano makes another exciting début in the title role of Salomé at the Cincinnati Opera. Lewek reprises her portrayal of Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in the concert performance with the Orchestre National de France conducted by Clelia Cafiero at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and Opéra de Nice sees Lewek’s interpretation of Violetta in La Traviata staged by Silvia Paoli and conducted by Andrea Sanguineti.
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Kathryn Lewek also revisits Mozart’s Queen of the Night in four productions of The Magic Flute. At the Royal Opera House in London, she joins David McVicar’s production conducted by Marie Jacquot. At the Berlin State Opera, Lewek stars alongside René Pape in August Everding’s staging of the opera, which reconstructs the iconic 1816 set design; with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, she graces semi-staged performances on a four-city tour. In Rolando Villazón’s new production with Roberto González-Monjas conducting, Lewek stars as the Queen of the Night at the Mozart Week festival. Among other highlights of the concert season is a baroque concert in Madrid with Ensemble Artaserse under the baton of Philippe Jaroussky, Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall with the Oratorio Society of New York, and a Classics for Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall with Musica Sacra New York.
Highlights of recent seasons include Lewek’s acclaimed début as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto at LAOpera and Cincinnati Opera, her first performances as Micaëla in Nashville Opera’s Carmen, as well as her house and role débuts as Puccini’s Musetta in Opera Colorado’s La bohème. Lewek also created the soprano role in the 2024 world premiere of Music for New Bodies, a DaCamera co-commission from Matthew Aucoin and Peter Sellars, which is soon to be released as a studio album. Lewek portrayed all Four Heroines in Les contes d’Hoffmann at the 2024 Salzburg Festival, repeating her previous success at Deutsche Oper Berlin and Florida’s Palm Beach Opera; headlined Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at Palm Beach Opera and Ohio’s Toledo Opera; and starred in the title role of Delibes’s Lakmé at Opéra de Nice and in a concert performance with the China National Opera House Symphony in Beijing.
Lewek is today’s reigning Queen of the Night. Since making her first appearance as Mozart’s antiheroine in 2011, she has sung the formidably challenging role more than 300 times with leading companies worldwide. These include London’s Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, Madrid’s Teatro Real, the Royal Danish Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera and New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where she has performed it a record-breaking 73 times. As the New Yorker’s Alex Ross observes, “she executes this stratospherically difficult role better than anyone alive.”
Among other career highlights is Lewek’s Salzburg Festival and role débuts as Ginevra opposite Cecilia Bartoli in Handel’s Ariodante, with which Lewek travelled to Opéra de Monte-Carlo before returning to Salzburg to make her role début as Eurydice in new staging of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. Other key firsts include her role débuts as Countess Adèle in Rossini’s Le comte Ory at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teresa in Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, and as Cunegonde, in Bernstein’s Candide for Glimmerglass Opera. It was Lewek who created the role of Jessica in the Bregenz Festival’s world premiere production of André Tchaikowsky’s The Merchant of Venice, winner of the International Opera Award for Best World Premiere of 2014. Lewek’s other notable operatic engagements include her portrayal of Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail for Lyric Opera of Kansas City, following previous appearances in the role at Deutsche Oper Berlin and Munich’s Bavarian State Opera. She made her house and title role débuts in Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at Canada’s Edmonton Opera; gave her first performances as La Fée in New Orleans Opera’s company premiere of Massenet’s Cendrillon; and sang Angelica in Handel’s Orlando on a European tour with Italy’s Il Pomo d’Oro ensemble, after débuting the role at Australia’s Hobart Baroque Festival, for which she won the coveted Helpmann Award. At Toledo Opera, where she is a firm audience favorite, Lewek has made role débuts as Violetta in a new treatment of Verdi’s La traviata, as Rosina in a new staging of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, and as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Since making her house and title role débuts in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera Carolina, in a co-production with Toledo Opera, she has reprised the role for a new production at Opéra de Nice.
When Lewek made her Carnegie Hall début with the Oratorio Society of New York in 2012, she impressed the New York Times with the “communicative verve and thrilling beauty” of her performance. This marked the first of her annual performances of Handel’s Messiah at the venue, for which she has since returned each holiday season with both the Oratorio Society and Musica Sacra New York. Other concert highlights include “Celebrating Leonard Bernstein at 100” with Washington National Opera, Bach’s B-minor Mass with Chicago’s Soli deo Gloria ensemble, his Christmas Oratorio with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Dallas Symphony, and Haydn’s Creation under John Nelson’s leadership. Performing choral works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Carissimi, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Monteverdi, Mozart, Orff, Verdi and Zelenka, she has appeared at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall and other venues with ensembles including the Rochester Philharmonic, Santa Barbara Symphony and Chicago’s Music of the Baroque. She also regularly performs in gala concerts and solo recitals nationwide, sometimes in collaboration with her husband, tenor Zach Borichevsky. In response to the global food crisis, the couple recently streamed a special concert to benefit the United Nations World Food Program.
Lewek made her operatic album début with a pair of German rarities, Orff’s Gisei and Weingartner’s Die Dorfschule, both recorded live for the CPO label at Deutsche Oper Berlin. More recently, two of her Salzburg successes were captured live for Blu-Ray DVD release by Unitel Edition: Ariodante and Orphée aux Enfers, which was nominated for a 2021 International Classical Music Award. Other operatic releases include Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and Armida abbandonata, both recorded with Il Pomo D’Oro for Pentatone. Her star turn in the Metropolitan Opera’s Magic Flute has twice streamed live to cinema audiences worldwide in the company’s award-winning Live in HD series: first in Julie Taymor’s holiday production and then, capturing the soprano’s record-breaking 50th Met performance as Mozart’s Queen of the Night, in the celebrated staging by Simon McBurney. Lewek also performs contemporary American Arts Songs on two Albany Records titles: Kathryn Lewek sings Cary Ratcliff, recorded with the composer at the piano, and Quicksilver, which features her account of David Liptak’s Songs for Persephone.
At the 2013 Operalia World Opera Competition, Kathryn Lewek took two top prizes, the highly competitive Audience Favorite Award among them. A graduate of the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice performance and literature, she lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two young children.
Current as of August 5, 2025
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"...the unquestioned star of the show is soprano Kathryn Lewek..." – Chicago Sun Times
Le Comte Ory – "But the unquestioned star of the show is soprano Kathryn Lewek, who revels in the preening role of a prima-donna opera singer portraying the spoiled Adèle in this opera within an opera, drawing cheers all afternoon long. With a lovely, high-flying soprano
voice, she handles the coloratura demands with thrilling ease."
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"...This is perhaps her most inspired turn to date..." – OperaWire
Die Zauberflöte – “Kathryn Lewek has become the Met Opera’s go-to Queen of the Night. Of her 44 performances at the Met to date, all of them have been in this role. And while it is easy to play this “villain” in one dimension, Lewek always seems to find shades and colors to explore. This is perhaps her most inspired turn to date.”
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"...Kathryn Lewek was utterly enthralling..." – The New York Times
Die Zauberflöte – “...the soprano Kathryn Lewek was utterly enthralling, emitting richly glowing bursts of notes like a collapsing star in “O zittre nicht.” She careered around the stage in a wheelchair during “Der Hölle Rache,” bringing thrilling drama to a coloratura showpiece so fiendish that sopranos are lucky to get through it when they’re standing stock still.”
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"...death-defying..." – Broadway World
Die Zauberflöte – “...the death-defying Kathryn Lewek…”
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"...one of opera’s most thrilling coloratura sopranos of this generation..." – BG Independent News
La Traviata – “Kathryn Lewek, who will be debuting the role of Violetta, has established herself as one of opera’s most thrilling coloratura sopranos of this generation. She has performed some of the most vocally challenging roles in the repertoire, joining the top-ranking operatic performers of all time”
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"...The effect is spellbinding..." – Classical Music
Apollo de Dafne – “Having led Handel’s Messiah, Orlando and Ariodante onstage, soprano Kathryn Lewek here turns to Handel cantatas. Her selection is shrewd: Armida abbandonata and Apollo e Dafne both channel technical, affective and dramatic prima donna power. Lewek wields this power majestically. . . Lewek builds on these distinctions in how she modulates her instrument and elaborates her melodies. Her Armida commands vocal muscle and jagged cadenzas, while her Dafne is all limpid purity sprinkled with agréments. The effect is spellbinding.”
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"...especially luscious at its stratospheric top..." – Opera News
Ariodante – “Lewek may not yet be as celebrated a performer as Bartoli, but here she is every bit as much a star. Her coloratura, more conventionally ‘bound’ than Bartoli’s, is consistently brilliant, and her voice is especially luscious at its stratospheric top. The central moment of her portrayal is the Act II aria 'Il mio crudel martoro'. Lewek turns it into a thirteen-minute tour de force of mournful utterance, using a seemingly shortness of breath to portray how profoundly the young woman has been wounded.”
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"... with eerie ease and enormous sound..." – The New York Times
Die Zauberflöte – “Indeed, when the soprano Kathryn Lewek, as the Queen of the Night, sang her character’s dazzling and demonic aria, many people started clapping halfway through, right after she dispatched the famous music’s bursts of coloratura passagework with eerie ease and enormous sound. Yes, she was quite a sight in her fantastical costume, a mothlike figure with multiple flapping wings. But it was her singing that had some children near me sitting up in their seats and breaking into applause.”
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"... Lewek sparkled both vocally and dramatically..." – operaexplorer
Orphee – “Kathryn Lewek sparkled both vocally and dramatically – she is a natural for such opera buffa or operetta type of roles”