Edith Wiens

Edith Wiens has most recently taught for twelve years at The Juilliard School in New York, where she also served as Chair of the Voice Faculty. Professor Wiens is the founder and director of the Internationale Meistersinger Akademie, created for emerging artists. She currently teaches the young artists of the Munich Opera, the Dutch National Opera Amsterdam, Opera Frankfurt, Opera Hannover, Opera Düsseldorf, Essen, as well as at the Warsaw Opera Academy. She is a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music in London, and an Artist-in-Residence at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Prof Wiens was privileged to lead the Vocal Residency of the Festival of Aix-en-Provence for several seasons, and has also taught singers of the Lindemann Program of the Metropolitan Opera New York for many years.

Dr. Wiens’ students are engaged by the world’s major houses: the Metropolitan Opera New York, Chicago Lyric Opera, Dallas Opera, Houston Grand Opera, London Covent Garden, Munich National Opera, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Dresden, Hamburg, Hannover, Amsterdam, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Vienna State Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Paris Bastille and Chatelet, and the Festival Aix-en-Provence. They have sung concerts in Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, the London Proms as well as with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, and in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, among many other venues.

Her students are also prizewinners of many prestigious international competitions including Operalia, the Glyndebourne Cup, the Metropolitan Opera National Council, Vinas, ARD, Gerda Lissner, George London Foundation, Opera Index, Kosciutszko Foundation, Sarah Tucker Study and Career Grants, Emerging Lincoln Center Artist, International Hugo-Wolf Competition, International Robert-Schumann Competition, the Dallas Opera Guild, Das Lied International Art-Song Competition, Mirjam Helin International Competition Helsinki, Bilbao, Savonnlina Finland, Montreal, Warsaw’s Moniuszko, and Rising Stars.

In her own illustrious career, the soprano Edith Wiens sang regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cleveland Symphony, New York Philharmonic, repeatedly opening the season there under Kurt Masur, all orchestras in London and Paris (Salle Pleyel, Notre Dame Cathedral, Chatelet, Radio France), Israel Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. She sang with Daniel Barenboim in Chicago, with Wolfgang Sawallisch in Vienna’s Musikverein, and with Sir Colin Davis with the London Symphony and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Ms Wiens was an avid recitalist, enjoying invitations to Wigmore Hall London and the Vienna Musikverein, as well as to Carnegie Hall, the Salle Gaveau in Paris and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, personally invited by Swjatoslaw Richter.

Seiji Ozawa, Nicolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, and Andrew Davis were among her opera conductors – with them, she sang major Mozart roles at the Glyndebourne Festival, in Japan, Amsterdam, La Scala Milano, and in Buenos Aires. Edith Wiens also sang in the Santa Fe Festival. She was the recipient of many awards, among them, in the course of her prolific recording career, the Grammy and Diapson d’Or. Edith Wiens is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and the recipient of several honorary doctorate degrees, among them a Doctor of Music from her alma mater Oberlin College.

Edith Wiens lives in Munich with her husband Kai Moser. Their two sons Johannes Moser (cello) and Benjamin Moser (piano) are both acclaimed musicians.