Soprano Marie Smolka was born in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and grew up in Germany. She quickly established herself as one of the most sought-after singing actresses of her generation and has since attracted attention for her intense and multifaceted portrayals of operatic characters.
On the opera stage, she has appeared as Contessa Almaviva (Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro) at the Komische Oper Berlin, Nedda (Leoncavallo: I Pagliacci) at the Staatsoper Hannover, and Violetta Valéry (Verdi: La Traviata) at the Koninklijk Theater Carré in Marina Abramović’s production 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (a co-production with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich). Other major roles include Mimì (La Bohème) and Tatiana (Eugene Onegin) at various opera houses, including the Staatstheater Saarbrücken, Theater Bremen and Landestheater Innsbruck, where she was most recently a member of the ensemble. There she also appeared in the title role of Hartmann’s Simplicius Simplicissimus; for this performance, the specialist magazine Opernwelt nominated her as one of the “most important singers of the year 2025”.
In the 2024/25 season, alongside her operatic engagements, Marie Smolka also made her debut in special concert formats, including John Neumeier’s ballet evening Epilog at the Hamburg State Opera, featuring Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs.
In the 2025/26 season, Marie Smolka made several further important debuts highlighting the breadth of her artistry. She made her French debut at the Opéra de Lille in Philip Glass’s Les Enfants terribles, as well as her Vienna debut with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under the musical direction of Petr Popelka in Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri.
Highlights of the 2026/27 season include her debut at the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 under the musical direction of Yoel Gamzou, as well as her debut at the Liederhalle Stuttgart in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Elias Grandy. She will also perform the same work at the Gewandhaus Leipzig.
Marie Smolka is also a regular presence on the concert stage. Her repertoire includes the Requiems by Mozart, Brahms and Dvořák, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and St Paul, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Handel’s Messiah, as well as the Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Marie Smolka has worked with conductors including Marc Albrecht, Cornelius Meister, Antonello Manacorda, Konrad Junghänel and Yoel Gamzou, and has collaborated repeatedly with directors such as Eva-Maria Höckmeyr, Lorenzo Fioroni, Tobias Kratzer, Armin Petras, Tatjana Gürbaca, Ulrike Schwab, Barbora Horáková and Robert Carsen.
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