Claudia Franner – lyric soprano

Claudia Franner was born in Vienna, Austria, where she studied voice with the American soprano Carol Byers and KS Elisabeth Schwarzenberg. She has also taken part in a Song-Staging course, led by the German director and acting coach Stephan Perdekamp, as well as master classes led by the French voice teacher Jean-Pierre Blivet. Ms. Franner is a prize winner of the Nico Dostal Operetta Competition in Austria.

Her operatic debut was as Susanna in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” with Opera Project Wien in Vienna’s Theater Akzent, followed by an engagement at the Czech Opera Festival Kutná Hora where she sang Inez in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore”. Later that year she created the title role in the world-premiere of Austrian-American composer Nancy Van de Vate’s children’s opera “Der Herrscher und das Mädchen” (“The Emperor and the Maiden”) at the Antonio Vivaldi Hall in Vienna. Furthermore Ms. Franner sang Gretel in Vienna’s National Radio-Broadcast Hall, Musetta and Adele with Opera Project Wien, and Pamina at the Kinderklang-Festival. Under the auspices of LA PRIMA VOLTA she interpreted the roles of Leïla (“Les Pêcheurs de Perles”) and Lucy (“The Telephone”), and with the orchestra Concilium musicum Wien, under conductor Paul Angerer, she returned to the role of Susanna (“Le Nozze di Figaro”) in the Stadttheater Steyr (Austria). Her latest engagements were in Stift Lilienfeld (Austria) with the Tonkünstler-Symphony Orchestra as Queen of the Night (“Magic Flute”) and the following year as Donna Anna (“Don Giovanni”) and she performed the role of Klärchen in “Die Sühne”, a forgotten opera by Austrian composer Josef Wenzl-Traunfels. Most recently she sang Marguerite in excerpts from Gounod’s “Faust”, the title role in Puccini’s “Suor Angelica”, both with LA PRIMA VOLTA in Vienna and Rosalinde in “Die Fledermaus” by Johann Strauß jr. with the Tonkünstler-Symphony Orchestra in Stift Lilienfeld.

Ms. Franner has appeared in numerous concerts in Europe, including the traditional New Year’s Concert at the Zeneakadémia Budapest and the Silvester concert on Vienna’s Rathausplatz. She also was the soprano soloist in Bach’s “St. John Passion” with the ensemble Il Piacere in Vienna’s Schottenkirche, sang Mozart arias with the Tonkünstler Kammerorchester at the Klassikfestival of Schloss Kirchstetten (Austria) and performed numerous operetta concerts with the Wiener Salonorchester. With the Marienbader Orchestra she also sang Maria in excerpts from Bernstein’s “West Side Story” in a Bernstein-Gershwin gala concert in the Czech Republic, and with LA PRIMA VOLTA she has performed in musical concerts, interpreting roles such as Cunegonde (“Candide”), Johanna (“Sweeney Todd”) and Rose in Kurt Weill’s American Opera “Street Scene”. Additionally, she has given several solo recitals in Vienna’s Baroque Salon as well as in Chicago’s Herold Washington Library Auditorium and most recently in the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.