Acclaimed on prestigious stages such as the Bayreuth Festival, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Glyndebourne Festival, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Theater an der Wien and Semperoper Dresden, German soprano Dorothea Herbert has earned international recognition for her portrayals of leading roles by Strauss, Wagner, Beethoven and Weber. 

Her artistry has inspired critical praise and plaudits. Opera Today writes, “Herbert’s beautiful, shining soprano is captivating, and that beauty is allied with strength which sees her rise to the top of Beethoven’s sometimes discomforting vocal lines with flexibility and ease.”

Highlights of the upcoming season include her debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper München as a Walküre and Senta Der fliegende Holländer at Opéra de Toulon.

Dorothea’s 2024/25 season began with Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Stuttgart Philharmonic under Andrey Boreyko at the Festival international de musique Besançon and at the Staatstheater Meiningen under Killian Farrell. She sings her acclaimed Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin at Theater Bremen and revisits Senta in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer at Staatstheater Wiesbaden and Landestheater Linz. In the summer, she returns to Bayreuth as Helmwige Die Walküre and debuts as Dritte Norm Götterdämmerung. Additionally, she will give her debut as Elisabeth Tannhäuser in the Kinderoper at the Bayreuther Festspiele. 

Highlights of the season 2023/24 were her return to Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in the title role of Rusalka which she also performed at Theater Freiburg, a new production of Salome at Staatstheater Braunschweig, a new production of Lohengrin at Theater Hagen, and her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Berliner Philharmonie with Elektra under Kirill Petrenko. At the Bayreuther Festspiele, Dorothea gave her debut as Helmwige Die Walküre under Simone Young.

Other important recent performances include her debut at Theater an der Wien in Christof Loy’s new production of Zazà as Floriana and La Signora Dufresne Fidelio at Glyndebourne Festival,  Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin at Staatstheater Darmstadt, Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Amelia in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera both at Nationaltheater Mannheim, Agathe in Weber’s Freischütz at Staatstheater Mainz, Staatstheater Kassel, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and Semperoper Dresden, Senta in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer at the Prague National Theatre, Salome at Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck and Walküre at Dutch National Opera under the baton of Marc Albrecht.  

Dorothea was born in Marburg an der Lahn and grew up in Munich, where she began her studies as a Young Scholar at the Richard-Strauss Conservatory. She went on to graduate from Trinity College of Music in London, and completed her studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Opera Studio at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in cooperation with Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, where she was supported by the Leverhulme Foundation. Dorothea is a Richard Wagner scholar and a prize winner of the Francisco Viñas Competition. Additionally, she has taken part in masterclasses with some of the world’s leading singers, Christa Ludwig, Montserrat Caballé and Anna Tomowa-Sintow among them.