After studying psychology, Hanna Schwarz began her vocal training at the Academy of Music in Hannover, where she also made her debut at the opera house with the role of Sigrune from Wagner’s Walküre. After winning a singing competition in Berlin, Hanna Schwarz was engaged by the Hamburg State Opera.
In 1975 she made her debut in Bayreuth, where she achieved her international breakthrough with the role of Fricka in the Chereau / Boulez Ring. In the following years Hanna Schwarz was also heard in Bayreuth as Erda, Brangäne and Waltraute.
An international opera career followed, which included all the major stages and encounters with renowned conductors, including Ring productions in San Francisco, the Metropolitan Opera under James Levine, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich under Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Hamburg and Covent Garden under Bernard Haitink. The Salzburg Festival engaged Hanna Schwarz for Parsifal and Die Zauberflöte under Herbert von Karajan, followed by Lulu / Geschwitz and Salome / Herodias. She also celebrated great successes with the roles of Octavian, Orpheus, Carmen (in a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle with Placido Domingo), as Amme (Die Frau ohne Schatten) or as Klytämnestra (Elektra). For her interpretation of this role she was named “Singer of the Year” in 1997.
Hanna Schwarz is equally at home on the concert stage. She has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the most important concert halls in Europe and America, such as Carnegie Hall New York, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonic Orchestras, the Vienna Musikverein and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, to name but a few.
Hanna Schwarz has appeared in numerous radio concerts and recordings, including Das Lied von der Erde, Gurrelieder, symphonies and songs by Gustav Mahler and the Verdi Requiem under Böhm, Ozawa, Levine, Mehta, Sinopoli, Maazel, Sawallisch, Dohnanyi and Bernstein. The artist has also made a name for herself through her interpretation of contemporary music and has performed works by Maurizio Kagel, Hans Werner Henze, Pierre Boulez, Alfred Schnittke and Leonard Bernstein.
Important recent projects include new productions of Les dialogues des Carmélites and The Queen of Spades in Basel, concerts of Die Dreigroschenoper in Vienna, London, Paris and Hamburg, Salome in Valencia, Rheingold in Seville, Salome at the New National Theatre Tokyo and a new production of Jenufa at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
At the 2011 Salzburg Easter Festival, Hanna Schwarz sang the role of Herodias in the Salome production conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, as well as new productions of Die Soldaten at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and at the Zurich Opera House, and Jenufa and Salome, also in Zurich, New productions of Tchaikovsky’s Charodeyka and Peter Grimes at the Theater an der Wien and Daphne in Basel and at the Hamburg State Opera, Jenufa at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Berlin State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera as well as Eugene Onegin at the Bastille in Paris, Katja Kabanova in Hamburg, and again Eugene Onegin also in Hamburg.