Biography
Alexandra Yangel is a dramatic soprano and former ensemble member of the Wiener Staatsoper. Her engagements have included Sonya in Prokofiev's Krieg und Frieden (War and Peace) at the Bayerische Staatsoper, in Dmitri Tcherniakov's production conducted by Vladimir Jurowski; Charlotte in Massenet's Werther at Theater Aachen; and Hänsel in Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. At Theater Erfurt she sang Marguerite in Berlioz's La damnation de Faust in 2023, returning in 2025 as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Alexandra grew up in Moscow in a family of musicians. Her grandmother was a music teacher who sang with her from an early age; her grandfather, a violinist, took her to concerts before she could read; and her mother, a pianist, accompanied her when she performed as a child. Opera was there from the beginning: at five, she told her family that one day she would sing Carmen. Yet it was the violin that occupied her early musical life. She studied first with Galina Turchaninova and later with Irina Bochkova at the Central Music School of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, graduating with honours after fourteen years of training.
At nineteen she began studying voice, and within a year had chosen singing as her profession. In 2013 she moved to Vienna, where she studied with Kammersängerin Elena Filipova and Birgid Steinberger at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien, completing a bachelor's degree in solo singing and a master's in Lied and oratorio, both with distinction.
A competition in Vienna in 2016 brought her to the attention of the Wiener Staatsoper. An invitation to audition followed, and in 2017 she joined the ensemble. During two seasons there she sang roles including Gláša in Káťa Kabanová, Julie in Dantons Tod and Dame comme ci, comme ça in Der Spieler, while covering some twenty others.
At the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari she sang Waltraute in Wagner's Die Walküre; at Oper Klosterneuburg, Nicklausse in Les contes d'Hoffmann. At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein she has also sung Lucienne in Korngold's Die tote Stadt, Diana in Orphée aux Enfers and a Blumenmädchen in Parsifal. She appeared in the world premiere of Péter Eötvös's Sleepless at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and subsequently at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
The violin has never quite left. She has played it on the operatic stage twice: during Nicklausse's aria in Les contes d'Hoffmann, and at the close of Krieg und Frieden in Munich. Her years as a violinist continue to inform her singing, particularly in her phrasing, sense of colour and intensity of tone.
Her current repertoire includes Wagner's younger heroines — Sieglinde, Senta, Elsa and Elisabeth — alongside Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Joan of Arc in The Maid of Orleans and Marietta in Korngold's Die tote Stadt. She is drawn to these roles as much for their dramatic demands as for their vocal writing, particularly to what music and text reveal about a character beyond what she is willing, or even able, to express.
Alexandra is a German citizen. She currently lives in Berlin.
