Photo: Amanda Lindgren
Karolina was born and raised in Stockholm and has worked professionally as an operasinger since 2007, when she graduated from the Stockholm Opera Academy. She has sung on opera stages and in concert halls all around Sweden, as well as in the rest of Europe and has made a name for herself as an artist with a wide artistic range.
She has performed roles at the Royal Opera Stockholm, Drottningholm Theatre, Theatre Megaron (Athens), Le Grand Thèatre Aix-en-Provence, Theater Carré (Amsterdam), the Beckett Theatre (Dublin), Athens Festival, Göteborgsoperan, B.A.M. (New York), Wexford Opera (Ireland), Folkoperan, Ulriksdals Palace Theatre and Malmö Opera.
Karolina had her big breakthrough in 2007 with the lead role of Xerxes in the opera by Händel, making her debut at the Drottningholm Theatre. Since then her career has included roles such as Orfeo (Gluck), Pauline (Queen of Spades), Ottone (L´incoronazione di Poppea), Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus), Fenena (Nabucco), Xerxes (Händel), Cornelia (Giulio Cesare, Händel), Giovanni Battista (Salome, Stradella), Maddalena (Rigoletto), Frau Peachum (Die Dreigroschenoper), Kasturbai/Mrs. Alexander (Satyagraha) and Mrs Lovett (Sweeney Todd). She has also taken on cross-over roles such as the baritone role of Guglielmo in Puccini´s opera Le Villi.
At the opera festival d´Aix-en-Provence she was noted for her interpretation of the role of Phèdre in Hippolyte et Aricie (Rameau). The production, named Pygmalion, was a collaboration between Les Arts Florissants and Sir William Christie together with the legendary choreographer Trisha Brown and the Trisha Brown Dance Company.
Collaborations with dancers, choreographers and dance companies have continued to be a part of Karolina´s career. In addition to Trisha Brown, she has worked with the Irish Animated State Dance Company, Apostolia Papadamaki (Greece), Lotta Melin (Sweden), Patrik Sörling (Sweden) and Cisco Aznar (Spain). Karolina has also worked with the Swedish new circus group Cirkus Cirkör in two productions featuring music by Philip Glass. The latter was Glass´s most recent opera Circus Days and Nights, which had its world premiere in 2021 at the Malmö Opera.
Karolina has also been engaged in numerous concerts, oratorios, lieder recitals, opera showrooms and chamber music collaborations, for example, with the Venetian chamber music orchestra Opera da Camera di Venezia which specializes in Vivaldi. In 2008 Karolina was invited to represent Sweden and perform at the state banquet during the Royal Cort´s visit to Lisbon, Portugal. She has also been engaged for the Baltic Sea Festival as well as the Swedish Television Fortnight concert at Berwaldhallen, Stockholm. Karolina has sung many contemporary compositions by, for example, Jonas Forsell, Paula af Malmborg Ward and Thomas Hewitt Jones and was the first soloist to perform the mezzo-soprano part in Requiem by Jan Sandström
Alongside her traditional work with the classical repertoire, Karolina has always had a passion for exploring and developing new ways of performing classical music. She has a great interest in stagecraft and has ensured that she has a number of her own concerts each year, where she can apply her own conceptual ideas. In 2013 she premiered her own performance, "Opera für Alle!", at the Stockholm City Theatre. In collaboration with Riksteatern - the Swedish National Theatre Organization - the performance went on a tour of 27 performances across Sweden during the autumn 2015.
In addition to her musical education, Karolina has a degree from the Gotland School of Fine Arts and a basic degree in Social Sciences. She also plays the alto saxophone, is a skilled sketcher and painter, and creates puppets and music productions. Click on the BLIXTART page for more information and pictures.
This season 2024/2025, Karolina is engaged at the Stockholm Royal Opera in the Swedish contemporary operas Löftet and Vilse, as well as in Jenufa, Sweeney Todd and Die Walküre.