Sacramento (California) born Irene Roberts is one of the most remarkable mezzo-sopranos of her generation, captivating audiences with her powerful vocal expressiveness and commanding stage presence.
At the beginning of the 2026/27 season, Irene Roberts will appear as the Composer in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, followed by three major debuts: her role and house debut as Santuzza (Cavalleria rusticana) at the Semperoper Dresden, her house debut as Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde) at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden under the musical direction of Christian Thielemann, and her house debut as Venus (Tannhäuser) at the Teatro Real Madrid.
She will also return as Kundry (Parsifal) to the Bavarian State Opera and the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, where she will make as well her highly anticipated role debut as Isolde in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Following her overwhelmingly acclaimed debut as Sieglinde in Tobias Kratzer’s production of Die Walküre at the 2026 Munich Opera Festival, she will return to the role at the 2027 Festival.
On the concert stage, she will perform Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the MDR Symphony Orchestra and appear as Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, a role she debuted at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2026 under the baton of Klaus Mäkelä.
From 2015/16 to 2023/24, Irene Roberts was a member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she sang a wide repertoire, including Hänsel, Marguerite (La damnation de Faust), Nicklausse, Cherubino, Rosina, Brangäne, and the title role in Carmen. Since then, she has appeared as a guest at the Deutsche Oper as Eboli (Don Carlo), Kundry, and once again as Carmen.
Further guest engagements have taken Irene Roberts to the Bayreuth Festival (Venus), the Bavarian State Opera (Suzuki, Kundry), the Tyrolean Festival Erl (Kundry), the Hanover State Opera (Kundry), the Teatro Massimo Palermo (Brangäne), Edinburgh International Festival (Venus), the New National Theatre Tokyo (Amneris), the Teatro La Fenice (Amneris), the Opéra national de Lyon (Venus), the Opéra national de Lorraine and the Opéra de Dijon (Boesmans' Julie), the Stadttheater Klagenfurt (Venus), the Dutch National Opera (Muse/Nicklausse, Brangäne) and the Macerata Opera Festival (Carmen), and in the USA at the San Francisco Opera (Offred/The Handmaid's Tale, Carmen, Dorabella, among others), the Metropolitan Opera, the Palm Beach Opera, the Atlanta Opera, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the New Orleans Opera, and the Lyric Opera Baltimore.
Irene Roberts can be heard on Opera Rara's studio recording as Malvina Douglas in Mercadante's Il Proscritto, conducted by Carlo Rizzi, which was released in 2023.
Irene Roberts is also in demand internationally as a concert singer, performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski, the San Francisco Symphony and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Sir Donald Runnicles, and in recitals at Wigmore Hall in London.