KATRINA WATERS

Singer · Broadcaster · Scholar

 

I make music, communicate art, and think deeply about creativity.

 

In my first career as an opera singer, my voice type was known as a Zwischenfach which translates as ‘between the fachs’ or a voice that sits in the middle. I have come to see it as a metaphor for my wider creative practice: I work between disciplines, between audiences and ideas, and I love to skewer expected and inherited narratives.

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A winner of the 2023 ABC Top 5 Arts Media Residency, I am the creator of the radio show Art to Arias and the Songs for Loud Women recording project — a feminist retelling of the Brünnhilde myth through newly commissioned works by Katy Abbott, Anne Cawrse, Melody Eötvös, Roya Safaei and Sally Whitwell. I advocate for gender equality in classical music, by programming, platforming and amplifying composers beyond the traditional canon.

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I do still sing traditional "Masterworks" and have performed with Opera Australia, English National Opera, and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Royal Festival Hall London. Though I started my career in the lighter roles of Mozart and Britten, now my voice sits comfortably in the large, loud ladies of Wagner, Verdi and Strauss — recently performing Sieglinde in Melbourne and the Valkyrie Waltraute in Die Walküre and Dritte Mägd. in Elektra for the Dramatic Voices Program, Berlin.

 

I am currently living out my dreams of being a mermaid, preparing Rhinemaiden, Wellgunde, for performance at City Recital Hall Sydney in 2026. And I still love a traditional Oratorio — performing the Mozart Requiem, Rossini Petite Mass Solemnelle, Bach St John and St Matthew Passion, Duruflé Requiem and Vivaldi Gloria as Alto Soloist — and sometimes as conductor and choral facilitator.

 

My PhD research at the ANU, Building Brünnhilde, has been published in Australian Voice and presented at Cambridge University.

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Based on Gadigal Country, Sydney Australia.