KATRINA WATERS

Singer · Broadcaster · Scholar

 

I make music, communicate art, and think deeply about creativity.

 

In my first career as an opera singer, my voice type was known as a Zwischenfach which translates as ‘between the fachs’ or a voice that sits in the middle. I have come to see it as a metaphor for my wider creative practice: I work between disciplines, between audiences and ideas, and I love to skewer expected and inherited narratives.

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A winner of the 2023 ABC Top 5 Arts Media Residency, I am the creator of the radio show Art to Arias and the Songs for Loud Women recording project — a feminist retelling of the Brünnhilde myth through newly commissioned works by Katy Abbott, Anne Cawrse, Melody Eötvös, Roya Safaei and Sally Whitwell. I advocate for gender equality in classical music, by programming, platforming and amplifying composers beyond the traditional canon.

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I do still sing traditional "Masterworks" and have performed with Opera Australia, English National Opera, and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Royal Festival Hall London. Though I started my career in the lighter roles of Mozart and Britten, now my voice sits comfortably in the large, loud ladies of Wagner, Verdi and Strauss including Sieglinde and the Valkyrie Waltraute in Die Walküre and Dritte Mägd. in Elektra for the Dramatic Voices Program, Berlin.

 

I am currently living out my dreams of being a mermaid, preparing Rhinemaiden, Wellgunde, for performance at City Recital Hall Sydney in 2026. And I still love a traditional Oratorio - performing the Mozart Requiem, Rossini Petite Mass Solemnelle, Bach St John and St Matthew Passion, Tippett Child of our Time and Elgar Dream of Gerontius as Alto Soloist — and sometimes as conductor and choral facilitator.

 

My PhD research at the ANU, Building Brünnhilde, has been published in Australian Voice and presented at Cambridge University.

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Based on Gadigal Country, Sydney Australia.