Austrian soprano Anna-Katharina Behnke was born in Wuppertal. Daughter of a singer, she made her professional operatic debut (while attending the Musikhochschule in Munich) as Susanna at the Kammeroper in Vienna. Other first roles were Lucia di Lammermoor at the National Theatre in Prague, Lulu in Basel and Karlsruhe and Christine in Richard Stauss’ Intermezzo.

1998-2000 she sang Lulu at the Opera Bastille in Paris and Salome in Bologne, Wiesbaden, Mannheim and at the Deutschen Oper am Rhein. During this period she has taken on a wide range of roles including Aida, Desdemona, Marschallin and Chrysothemis, Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes from Benjamin Britten, Lady Macbeth of Mzensk from Shostakovich, Violanta from Korngold, the Priorin in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites, The Woman in Erwartung from Schoenberg and Judith in Bartok’s Bluebeard. In 2001 she sang Gutrune and Senta in Trieste, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser in Halle and Leipzig.

In 2002 she made her debut at the Scala in Milan in the role of Salome, and in the same year at the Châtélet in Paris with Arabella. She sang Elsa at the Aalto-Theatre in Essen and Fidelio at the Vlaamse Opera, a role she interprets in all three versions Beethoven wrote, Fidelio, Leonore of 1805 and Leonore of 1806.

Her first operetta-roles she sang in 2003 in Porto, Rosalinde and The Merry Widow, both in the same evening. She was the Chrysothemis at the Festival in Peralada and Salome in Tokio. For the first production of an opera in the original cech language at La Scala, she returned to Milan for the role of the Fox in Janáceks Cunning Little Vixen.

In 2004 she was invited by the Bolshoi in Moscow to sing Senta in a spectacular direction of The Flying Dutchman by Peter Konwitschny, a role, she interpreted also in Riga, Rome and at the Maifestspiele in Wiesbaden. She went to Stuttgart for another Salome, to Porto for the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss and to Lisbon for Tove in Gurrelieder of Schoenberg.

In the following year Anna-Katharina Behnke enlarged her repertoire with Emilia Marty (The Makropulos Case) and the rarely played Mona Lisa from Max von Schillings at the Opera House in Braunschweig, as also with Irene (Rienzi) in Essen. She sang Senta at the Maríinski in St. Petersburg and for Salome in a staging of Willi Decker she returned at the Vlaamse Opera.

In 2006 she sang her first Ariadne in Wiesbaden, performed the double-role of Venus/Elisabeth in Münster, Fidelio in Helsinki, and for Marie/Marietta she was invited by the Grand Theatre in Geneva. In this year Madame Behnke sang also her first Isolde in Rome.

Her debut at the Semperoper in Dresden followed 2007 in the title-role of Ariadne, and shortly after her debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid with the role of Marie in a composition of Wozzek by Manfred Gurlitt, a contemporain of Alban Berg. At the Theatre Sao Carlo in Lisbon she sang her first Sieglinde in Graham Vick’s staging of the “Ring”. For Gutrune in Twighlight of the gods under the direction of Peter Schneider she was invited by the Bruckner Festival in Linz, for Msa Gagolskaja by the opera in Cagliari and for the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven by the Arena di Verona. She sang Isolde in Bremen and Marta (Tiefland) in Braunschweig and Vienna.

In the same role in 2008 she gave her debut at the Deutschen Oper Berlin and for the role of Emilia Marty in a staging of Krzystoph Warlikowski she went back to Madrid. In her birth place Wuppertal, Anna-Katharina Behnke sang her first Requiem of Verdi. She was also invited for her first Missa Solemnis at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. She performed Isolde under the direction of Dennis Russel Davies at the International Bruckner Festival in Linz and for Rosalinde she returned to the Grand Theatre of Geneva.