Serena Sáenz

Sáenz was thirteen when she first walked onto the stage of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, in Hans Krása's Brundibár in 2008. Born in Barcelona in 1994, she studied at the Conservatori Superior del Liceu with Dolors Aldea and Eduard Giménez, then in Berlin with Anna Samuil at the Hanns Eisler school, and entered the opera studio of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, where she sang Pamina, Zerlina and the Forest Bird in Siegfried. First prize at the Montserrat Caballé competition in 2021 was followed by second prize and the Birgit Nilsson Prize at Operalia in Riga in 2022, a Vienna State Opera debut the same year, and a Bayerische Staatsoper debut as Lucia in 2024. Her repertoire centres on the lyric coloratura roles — Lucia di Lammermoor, Zerbinetta, Nannetta, the Queen of the Night, Lauretta — and she recorded her first solo album, BIRDS, in 2025. Her Lucia was first sung at the Liceu in 2021, the house she later opened as Norina in a new Don Pasquale and where she also took Prilepa and sang Pamina with Gustavo Dudamel; in Madrid she added Lisa in La Sonnambula at the Teatro Real. Berlin gave her Frasquita in Carmen under Daniel Barenboim, and in concert she has sung Mahler's eighth and fourth symphonies, the Mozart C minor Mass with the RTVE orchestra and Rutter's Magnificat with the Munich Radio Orchestra. Operalia also brought her the Pepita Embil zarzuela prize, and she holds awards from the Paris Opera and Francisco Viñas competitions.