Following on from the enormous success she enjoyed here last season with three role debuts: Violetta in La Traviata, Giunone in La Calisto and Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress, Brenda Rae extended her repertoire further during Oper Frankfurt’s 2012/13 season, bringing the house down with the title role in Maria Stuarda (in concert) and Cleopatra in a new production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Guest engagements in 2013 include Polissena in concert performances of Radamisto on tour in Europe and the USA, Pamina in Bordeaux, Violetta in Santa Fe and a concert at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg. This American soprano trained at the Julliard School, Juilliard Opera Center in New York and Glimmerglass Opera’s Young American Artists Program and was awarded first prize by the Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation in 2007. In 2008/09 she joined the ensemble at Oper Frankfurt, where she has thrilled audiences with many roles including the title roles in Lucia di Lammermoor and de Almeida’s La Giuditta (first ever staged performances of this work), Angelica (Orlando furioso), The Governess (The Turn of the Screw), Oscar (Un ballo in maschera), Musetta (La Bohème), Lora (concert performanaces of Wagner’s Die Feen/The Fairies), Olympia (Hoffmanns Erzählungen/The Tales of Hoffmann) and Mozart’s Sandrina (La finta giardiniera), Servilia, Pamina and Konstanze – the role with which she made her triumphal debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich in January 2012. Other recent engagements have included Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos in Bordeaux and Handel’s Rinaldo at Glyndebourne and the London Proms.