New Zealand-born mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew has been a member of the Ensemble at Oper Frankfurt since 2019.
Opening the 2024/25 season at Oper Frankfurt, Bianca will present a solo recital, ‘The Seven Ages of Woman’, featuring songs by Ives, Walton, Heggie, Jenny McLeod and Dorothy Freed. On the operatic stage, she will sing the roles of Gymnasiast/Groom/Garderobière and La Bonté in new productions of Berg’s Lulu and Magnard’s Guercoeur. She will also reprise the roles of Adalgisa and The Tsarina in two Christof Loy productions of Norma and Christmas Eve.
Recent seasons have included several notable debuts for Bianca : in 2023/2024, she made role debuts as Sesto in a new production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto directed by Nadja Loschky, and as the Page in Barrie Kosky’s celebrated production of Salome, and she reprised the roles of Dimitri (Fedora), Tebaldo (Don Carlo) and the Tsarina in Christof Loy’s award-winning production of Christmas Eve. Bianca also appeared this season at the Tiroler Festspiele in Erl, singing Fricka (Das Rheingold and Die Walküre), directed by Brigitte Fassbaender.
in 2022/23 she sang the role of Angelina (La Cenerentola) at Oper Frankfurt and Staatsoper Stuttgart, followed by the title roles in Hänsel und Gretel and Xerxes, as well as Suzuki (Madama Butterfly) in Frankfurt. Bianca created the role of Aurelia to great acclaim in the premiere of Vito Zuraj’s opera Blühen, directed by Brigitte Fassbaender, which was awarded ‘World Premiere of the Year’ for 2023 by Opernwelt.
In the 2021/22 season, Bianca returned to her native New Zealand to sing Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) with NZ Opera, followed by debuts as Adalgisa (Norma), the Tsarina (Rimsky-Korsakov’s Christmas Eve) and Preziosilla (La forza del destino) for Oper Frankfurt. Bianca’s earlier roles for Frankfurt include Tebaldo (Don Carlo), Zweite Magd (Daphne), Mercédès (Carmen) and Enrichetta di Francia (I Puritani) while she was still a member of the Opernstudio. During this time, she also performed at the 2018 Bregenzer Festspiele as Bernardo (Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci), and at the 2019 Garsington Opera festival as Flamel (Offenbach’s Fantasio), where she also received the coveted Leonard Ingrams Award.
Bianca began her operatic career as an Emerging Artist with New Zealand Opera and in undergraduate vocal studies at the New Zealand School of Music with Margaret Medlyn. She later received a scholarship to study at London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama under the tutelage of Yvonne Kenny, where her roles included Händel’s Radamisto and Philomène (Martinu’s Alexandre bis). Bianca was the winner of the Song Prize in the 2016 Kathleen Ferrier Awards in London and in 2021 won the Anny Schlemm Prize in Frankfurt. Throughout her studies and career, Bianca has been generously supported and mentored by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.