Karin Bonelli

Karin Bonelli joined the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera in 2012, the first woman in its wind section, and the Vienna Philharmonic in 2015. Born at Grieskirchen in 1988, she studied in Linz with Gisela Mashayekhi-Beer and in Vienna with Wolfgang Schulz and Karl-Heinz Schütz, spent a year at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Lyon with Philippe Bernold, and finished her Vienna degree with distinction in the summer of 2012, entering the opera orchestra that September. She had won repeatedly at Austria's Prima la Musica competition as a schoolgirl, in the solo, duo and trio categories. She taught at the Kunstuniversität Graz in 2017–18; she also taught orchestral repertoire at Vienna's University of Music and Performing Arts between 2019 and 2023. She founded the Penthesilea Academy, which coaches young flute and trumpet players and includes mental and technical preparation. Her first flute lessons came from her mother, her father being a flautist and professor as well, and her studies also took her to Munich; her teachers included Günter Voglmayr, Philippe Boucly and Julien Beaudiment. Early orchestral work took her into the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre National de France and the Opéra National de Lyon, and she is a founding member of the Vienna Wind Quintet and of Klangkollektiv Wien, playing chamber music with the violinist Benni Schmid and the pianist Markus Schirmer.