18.12.2025

NIKOLA HILLEBRAND | A December full of opera and concert performances

Kicking of the start of the month with her anticipated return to the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, she took on a role she has sung on numerous occasions: the role of Gretel in Humperdinck’s beloved festive operatic piece Hänsel & Gretel. Praised for her light and lyrical soprano, her interpretation was a perfect embodiment of the youthful character, throwing out top notes with insouciant ease.

Following her successes in Munich, she joined the musicians of the Tonkünstler Orchestra in Austria for a small tour of solo performances she performs for the first time: Berg’s Seven Early Songs. Often characterised for its positioning on the border between later 19th-century Romanticism and early atonality, the songs explore a new, hazy "harmonic dreamscape" with whole-tone scales (as in the first song, "Nacht") and dissonance that hints strongly at the atonal music of the Second Viennese School that Berg would soon embrace. Hillebrand’s lyrical purity, bright timbre, and technical finesse make this an exciting new combination for the concert stage.

Having previously sung Bach’s B minor mass earlier this year at the Philharmonie de Paris under Klaus Mäkelä and the Orchestre de Paris, she now joins a host of shining soloists under the renowned Bach specialist Raphaël Pichon at the helm of the Berlin Philharmoniker, shortly before the Christmas week.

Those unable to make the concerts can catch the live stream of the B minor mass on Saturday 20 December on the Digital Concert Hall, as well as its repeat the day after.