Mezzo-soprano Dorothea Spilger, born in Landshut, Germany, graduated from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich in 2013. There she studied under the tutalege of Prof. Fenna Kügel-Seifried, earning a degree in both opera and concert-singing.
Some of her highlights on the opera-stage have been Prinz Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Ruggiero in Alcina, Ramiro in La finta giardiniera, Dorabella in Così fan tutte and Sesto in La clemenza di Tito. She has performed at Opéra National de Lyon where she gave her debut as Lapak in Janáček’s Cunning little Vixen and also sang the 3rd Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.
In the 2014/15 season she sang Nerone in L’incoronazione di Poppea and Siébel in Faust at the Theater Erfurt (Germany). In 2015/16 she worked as a guest-singer at Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, the National Theatre Prague and Tiroler Festspiele Erl. In 2016/17 she performed as a soloist at Teatro alla Scala in Milano, where she could be seen in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and as the alto-soloist in Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium under the baton of Fabio Luisi. In September 2017 she gave her debut as Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at the Teatro alla Scala.
In 2018 she has sung Lisa in Weinberg’s Die Passagierin at Danish National Opera and Amalia in Giordano’s Mala Vita at the Wexford Festival Opera in Ireland.
After one season as a member of the soloist ensemble of Staatstheater Braunschweig, where she sang roles such as Fenena in Nabucco, Lisa in Die Passagierin and Amelia in Mark-Anthony Turnages opera twice through the heart she returned to the Danish National opera as Maddalena in Rigoletto and La Scaramouche in La fête galante (Poul Schierbeck) and sang the role of Martesia in Wilhelmine von Bayreuth‘s opera Argenore in a DVD-production for Theater Münster.
Following her debut at the Copenhagen Opera Festival (La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi) she embodied Amneris in a new production of Aida at the Danish National Opera, where she will return in autumn 2022 as Estella in Asger Hamerik’s La Vendetta.
Since the 2022/23 season Dorothea since be a member of the soloist-ensemble at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, where she embodies roles such as Amneris, Foreign Princess in Rusalka as well as Carmen.
In the current season she debuts the roles of Venus in Tannhäuser (at Badisches Staatstheater) and La Principessa Eboli in Don Carlo (Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern), which she will also sing at the Finnish National Opera Helsinki in 2025.
During her studies, Dorothea Spilger has been a scholar of the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung and received a scholarship from Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now, in 2014. She is a laureate of the competition Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg, the Competizione dell’opera, the International Johannes-Brahms-Competition for Song, and the International Antonín-Dvořák-competition for Opera and Song. Dorothea has also recorded a solo-programme of opera arias with the symphony-orchestra of the Czech Radio Prague under the baton of Ondřej Lenard.