Golda was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1983. Her mother is a retired nurse, and her father is a retired university professor of Mathematics. Golda studied journalism at Rhodes University before switching to singing at the University of Cape Town, and then at the Juilliard School in New York. In 2011, Golda won a place at the Opera Studio of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, after which her career developed rapidly.
From her base in Germany she has conquered the world’s opera houses and concert halls, from the Vienna State Opera to the Salzburg Festival; and from La Scala, Milan, to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, to name but four.
In 2020 Golda appeared at the Last Night of the Proms in London, and the following year the recording of Porgy and Bess, in which she portrayed the role of Clara, received a Grammy Award. In 2022 Golda was described as a “gifted soprano” when she received the Bavarian government’s Special Prize for Culture. She was also named Artiste Étoile by the Lucerne Festival the same year.
Her debut album with the pianist Jonathan Ware was likewise released in 2022: This Be Her Verse is devoted to female composers who until then had been ignored by music historians. Reviewers were enthusiastic: the Munich Merkur described it as “one of the most powerful lieder albums of the recent past”, while the Guardian welcomed it as a further demonstration of Golda’s versatility and musical intelligence. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung spoke of the soprano “singing with so much dramatic talent, such magnificent use of tone, colours, and such a feeling for swing that even Schubert and Schumann would have swallowed hard.” This album demonstrates Golda’s great love of lieder and concert singing, a world in which she is just as much at home as she is in the realm of opera.
