Marie-Luise Dreßen

German mezzo-soprano Marie-Luise Dreßen was born in Torgau and studied at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hochschule in Leipzig with Elvira Dreßen and Roland Schubert, working later in master classes with Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and Franz Grundheber. Ensemble contracts shaped her first decade — Theater Gera-Altenburg from 2009 to 2011, then Luzerner Theater to 2016 and the Staatstheater Kassel to 2019 — and Octavian, sung at Theater Vorpommern in 2008 and Malmö Opera in 2011, has stayed at the centre of her repertoire. Around it sit the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, Hänsel, Cherubino, Dorabella, Sesto, Angelina, Ruggiero in Alcina, Orlofsky and a line of Wagner parts. Since 2019 she has appeared at the Paris Opera, the Teatro Real, the Semperoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Teatro di San Carlo and the opera houses of Cologne and Leipzig, working with Thielemann, Nagano, Bychkov, Jordan and Gilbert. She was nominated as a young artist of the year in Opernwelt for Sesto in 2013 and Ruggiero in 2014. She sang in Der Rosenkavalier at the State Opera Rousse in March 2017, in a cast that included Maria Tsvetkova-Madzharova, Momchil Milanov and Alexander Baranov.