KATALIN SZUTRÉLY – soprano

Katalin Szutrély graduated from the Liszt Academy of Music with degrees in choral conducting and vocal pedagogy, and later earned her doctoral (DLA) degree there as well; her dissertation explored connections within German Romantic song and choral literature. Alongside her theoretical studies and professional work, singing has always remained central to her life. Her most important teachers in this field were Valéria Berdál (Szeged – voice studies), Vera Rózsa (United Kingdom), and Anna Reynolds (Germany).

From 2002 to 2007 she taught voice, solfège, and music history at the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Academy in Kecskemét, where she also conducted the choir.

As a singer, she is primarily active in the realm of art song and oratorio. Her repertoire in these genres is shaped predominantly by the works of Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, Bach, Michael and Joseph Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Richard Strauss, and Fauré. Throughout her career, German Romantic lieder have held a particularly prominent place in her repertoire. As an opera singer, she has appeared in works by Charpentier, Purcell, Rameau, Leclair, Handel, Mozart, and Wagner. In 2025 she performed, among others, the roles of Nitocris (Handel: Belshazzar), Elettra (Mozart: Idomeneo), and Raffaele (Haydn: Il ritorno di Tobia), as well as the second soprano part in Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

As a soloist, she appears regularly at Hungary’s most important concert venues, including Müpa Budapest – Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, the Liszt Academy – Grand Hall and Solti Hall, and the Kodály Centre in Pécs. Her principal artistic partners include the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra under the direction of György Vashegyi, and she also performs frequently with Concerto Budapest and the Saint Stephen Philharmonic. As a recitalist, her most significant pianist partners are Mihály Berecz and Petra Somlai.

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Elisabeth Scholl started her carrier as the member of the choir Kiedricher Chorbuben. At university she studied musicology and English literature. She began voice training with Professor Eduard Wollitz later specialising in early music and historical performance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (also studied with René Jacobs). This is where she developed her ongoing interest for researching libraries for unpublished music manuscript. Her numerous CD-recordings from the early baroque to the romantic period testify to her stylistic diversity.

Elisabeth Scholl has been invited as soloist to several major European festivals (such as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik-Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, Lufthansa Festival in London, Festwochen Luzern, Festival van Vlaanderen, Händel-Festspiele in Halle, Göttingen und Karlsruhe, BBC Proms) and has performed with conductors like René Jacobs, Jos van Immerseel, Frieder Bernius, Enoch zu Guttenberg, Bruno Weil, Nicholas McGegan, Sir Neville Marriner.
She is regularly invited to song recitals, and has been performing at the Aalto-Theater in Essen (Countess in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, in the summer residence of Caio Vivaldi Ottone), in the Berlin State Opera (Haydn, Il mondo della luna) and in the Vlaamse Opera of Gent (Mozart, Donna Elvira). Elisabeth Scholl was Professor for Baroque Singing at Nuremberg between 2009-18, and between 2016-17 at the University of Music in Weimar. Since 2018 she has been Professor at the Mainz School of Music, where she teaches singing and will took over the artistic direction of the Baroque Vocal Academy’s excellence program in April 2021.